Canadian Cultural Centre presents Derek Besant Restless Nights (Nuits blanches) on view September 26 – October 26, 2012.
Restless Nights invites us to experience a particular aspect—more cinematic than photogenic—of the vast Canadian landscape, the never-ending journeys and impersonal service stations along the deserted roads taken to cross the country from east to west. It is a metaphorical and lonely night journey, a road movie that leads us to from one motel room to another, with their unmade beds, silent witnesses to restless nights serving as a frame for the narrative. A hybrid soundtrack, an intriguing mix of music, noise, and stories, immerses the visitor in an open-ended narrative.
Besant’s Restless Nights are in fact darkrooms, “negative” images in the luminous sense of the word, stripped of any distinctive features and inhabited by lines. Outlines innervating a ghost; blurrier lines that only reveal folds and creases. Made up of large photographic canvases printed in thermal ink using a high-tech process, the Restless Nights exhibition is taken from the 15 Restless Nights series first exhibited in 2006 on the occasion of the thirtieth anniversary of the Harbourfront Centre in Toronto. The series has travelled across Canada and Eastern Europe.
Canadian Cultural Centre
5 rue de Constantine
75007 Paris, France
T+ 33 1 44 43 21 90
www.canada-culture.org