The emergence of a geological consciousness in contemporary art.
Minerals, made up of chemical elements, are the very foundation of life on Earth. They are both common—such as air and water, at times invisibly modulating our environment and well-being—and exceptional—harbouring millennia-old histories and possessing unique properties. Rocks inspire ways of making and imagining the world in response to their resistance and their formations, and widen our perspectives on time and space.
This issue bears witness to the emergence of a geological consciousness in contemporary art, attentive to memories and past lives buried in rocky mountains, open-pit quarries or manufactured goods. Artists are inquisitive and critical when considering the presence of minerals, their expressiveness and their ability to act on and modulate their environments. More than just landscape elements, the study of these minerals and stones reveals the surprising itineraries of matter and the interdependence of the globe's regions and the bodies covering it.
Founded in 1987 in Montreal, led by André-Louis Paré since 2013, Espace art actuel is an essential bilingual magazine for the promotion of contemporary art in the field of sculpture, installation and all other art forms associated with the notion of spatiality.
