Alain Bublex

Galerie Georges-Philippe et Nathalie Vallois, Paris
Collection Jean Albou, Paris
Sale: Artcurial, Art Contemporain, Collection Jean Albou, 29 January 2008, lot 38
Collection Alain & Candice Fraiberger 

Linz, Offenes Kulturhaus, Archives X, 1998; catalogue, pp. 138, 145, illustrated
Montreal, Glooscap, photography month, 2005

The colours are fairly accurate in the catalogue illustration, although the overall tonality is warmer in the original work. The work is in good overall condition.
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"Whether Glooscap exists or not does not matter. For me, it exists almost as much as any other town I visited."

Alain Bublex interviewed on the occasion of a solo show held in July 1999 at the Fondation Louis-Moret de Martigny. P. 177 in Bernard Guelton, les arts visuels, le web et la fiction, Paris, 2006.

With his Glooscap city-artwork, Alain Bublex follows in the footsteps of Thomas More and the great 20^th century modernist utopias. Starting in 1985 and for more than ten years, the artist has made up archival documents (videos, aerial views, photographs, meteorological records, socio-economic studies) "which organization gave life to a likely city" (Nicolas Bourriaud). Alain Bublex stages a virtual and ever-changing construction site: a livable universe. For the artist, "behind all these fictional projects, I did as if I was acting in real life". Bublex's starting point for Glooscap city was the fact that "it was no longer possible to build a utopia today. With Glooscap, I felt from the start that this aspiration to a better world had become impossible, and that this imaginary town project would reflect it. This is why, despite of the escapes it provides, Glooscap is no ideal city." (ibid.) The artist is not operating in the field of imagination or critical utopia.

Instead, he focuses on history: Glooscap is less the mapping of a territory than the "representation of the passing of time." The artist brought this city to life, but then he "disappeared behind the reality of its construction, which time only can end up fathering. The figure of the artist that emerges from his work is that of history itself. As a creator of forms, Bublex tries to compete with human history like Balzac did with civil state." Nicolas Bourriaud.