“Art today is the product of a distinctively contemporary mix of cultural, technological, social, and geopolitical forces.”
Terry Smith; Contemporary Art / World Currents.
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SKYFACES – 36.0
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THE ARTIST
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More than 15 years ago, critique Amalia Caputo⁽¹⁾ highlighted how “Cerj Lalonde moves smoothly from the canvas to the camera, from computers to installations, producing and showcasing an extraordinarily rich and complex body of work created during the last 30 years.”
During his solo exhibitions at the Museo Torre Pallotta, in Calabria, and at the Castello di Lupinari in Florence, Italy, curator Antonina Zaru⁽²⁾ discovered the source of the artist’s rich creative freedom: “Although a diligent experimenter that also applies a complex assortment of mediums (photography, video, installation, performance, digital work), Cerj Lalonde remains above all an extraordinary painter.” — Art remains at the source of it all!
As ex-Montreal Fine Arts Museum Director Leo Rosshandler⁽³⁾ said it more than 25 years ago:
“Cerj Lalonde art cannot be confined to local or national borders. The artist is part of the great revolutionary movement born from European analytical cubism in the early 20ieth century, ranging from the Russian avant-garde esthetic idealism of the 1910s and 1920s, to minimalism, postmodern conceptual, and present-day deterritorialized digital art exploration.”
Experimenting with emerging technology was just a natural practice for an artist who first registered at the university in mathematics and studied anthropology and art history. Manipulating the small Commodore computer in the early 1980s, Lalonde used hieroglyphic encryption to transmit hidden messages besides colorful abstract compositions.
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This was also when the artist founded Atelier Transgression in Montreal, an alternative art center where he curated a series of performances, installations, and exhibitions.
In the 1990s, Cerj Lalonde created sequences of digital artwork, first using Corel Draw software, and then Photoshop, which both increased his experience of digital interfaces. He also integrated multimedia technology to create complex installation experiences incorporating words, sound, video, photography, light, and painting.
To better express his art, Cerj Lalonde developed an obsessive need to understand and feel the Zeitgeist — he has always been passionate about history and global issues of the time. After touring the USA and Europe with his art, Lalonde decided to move to Miami where the art scene was to explode with the arrival of Art Basel Miami Beach.
By 2015, the dramatic persistence of a series of major global issues pushed Lalonde to create a monumental project (FACING THE SKY) with the goal, besides the magic and magnitude of the art, to increase awareness and activism regarding these mounting issues, focusing first and foremost on the environmental concern. Satellite capture, AI avatar for interaction, cutting edge engineering for the installation of a half-of-a-square mile “Face” on the Biscayne Bay during the Art Basel international fair were just a few aspects of the project (still a project) that show how Lalonde sees advanced technologies as an organic part of contemporary art expression. As critique and psychiatrist Phillip Romero MD⁽⁴⁾ wrote in his article: “Cerj has his pulse on the cultural transformations that the human species is undergoing: breakthrough ideas and revolutionary technologies are springing from the creative minds of art and science. FACING THE SKY perfectly embodies the emerging ‘Global brain-mind’ created by social media and the internet.”
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This video was made a few years ago about the physical installation of FACING THE SKY in Miami Beach during Art Basel. This original project had to be postponed because of the pandemic.
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After more than twenty years in the US, the nomad artist decided to move around the world again, specifically in Asia, where a new geo-political gravity was in full expansion. Cerj Lalonde went to China to better understand the people and stayed in the country four years straight until the COVID-19 pandemic forced him out in 2021. That is after crisscrossing the land from Beijing to Tibet and the footsteps of the Himalayas, from Xi’an to Shenzhen, before retreating in a small remote valley in the mountains of Guizhou province for two years — and finally falling in love in Shanghai, the bustling Asian megalopolis.
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The artist worked on several art projects in Guizhou province, including exposing with contemporary technology the problematics facing ethnic minorities, as well as creating a series of paintings that were later exhibited at the Shanghai Art Fair. Moving to Shanghai, Cerj Lalonde continued creating art in his M-50 studio for another two years, working with galleries and architects, eventually starting a series of highly digitalized portraits when the pandemic emerged in January 2020.
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Cerj Lalonde believes in the strategic importance of creating bridges among people of the world and advocates increasing communication and exchange between East and West, between North and South.
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After completing in the USA a 440-page, 12 x 12″ hardcover photo-book on his Chinese experience, the artist is now back in Canada-Québec-Montréal creating the fractal poetry of the SKYFACEs and the dream of a better world of FACING THE SKY – introducing them both to the NFT and the blockchain universe.
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(1) Amalia Caputo is a curator, an artist, and a contributor to the publications Extracamara Magazine, Caracas and Arte Al Dia International, Miami. She received a Master of Arts in Photography at New York University and the International Center of Photography. Her work has been exhibited in museums and galleries in Caracas, Barcelona, Mexico City, New York and Miami.
(2) Antonina Zaru is an Italian curator and art critic who has organized several exhibitions and retrospectives (from Miro and Magrite to Richard Serra and Nam June Paik) in Museums around the world (New York, Washington, Tokio Basel, Austria, Spain, Corea Rome, Milan, Venice).
(3) Leo Rosshandler, former Director of Montreal Museum of Fine Arts; former President of Quebec Museums Association.
(4) Phillip Romero MD is a Family Psychiatrist, artist, founder of The smART Peace Prize: Art Against Human Destructiveness. He is the author of:
– THE ART IMPERATIVE: The Secret Power of Art.
– PHANTOM STRESS: Brain Training to Master Relationship Stress (2010).
– ANDY’S BRAIN: A Brain-Mind-Art-Culture Look at Andy Warhol’s Genius
Cerj Lalonde is represented in Miami, Dallas and Los Angeles by Markowicz Fine Art
https://markowiczfineart.com/artists/a/all, and in Shanghai by CoSpace Gallery:
artsy.com: https://www.artsy.net/artist/cerj-lalonde
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CERJ LALONDE: THE MULTIPLES GAZES
LES MULTIPLES REGARDS – 多重凝视
Fully illustrated, 440 pages, 12 x 12″ / 30 x 30 cm.
PAINTING | DIGITAL WORK | INSTALLATION ART | PROJECTS
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Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful,
committed individuals can change the world.
Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.
Margaret Mead