Ikeda has said that one of the primal roles of artists working today is to assure a “materialization” of the creation process; his perception of artistic creation is on par with the theories of many contemporary thinkers, like John Tresch, who argue that one of the roles of contemporary art is to make things publicly visible, to generate consciousness. Here, the tangible and the intangible can be linked to both the material and the conceptual aspects of Ikeda’s work, allowing the visitors to reflect on the importance (or the obsolescence) of the object and on the roles of art today.

This investigation of the ever-changing status of materiality and tangibility in our society, manifested in our relationship to objects and to our definition of technology itself, is certainly current. Much writing in philosophy and media studies is interested in describing the ways in which new technologies have modified the way we perceive and use objects. This dematerialization and digitization of information, for some, has created a radically different way of interacting with objects; no longer dependent on the material, we celebrate the instantaneous and the virtual. Of course, some argue the contrary: the virtual networks we use everyday are dependent on our consumption of various apparatuses and gadgets, illustrating how the technological revolution has a material impact on the world we live in.

Daniel Fiset
DHC/ART Education

Photo: Richard-Max Tremblay