Millet Matrix: Contemporary Art, Collaboration, Curatorial Praxis

Millet Matrix: Contemporary Art, Collaboration, Curatorial Praxis
Publication by Rosika Desnoyers, David Tomas, and Marc James Léger

How do art exhibitions serve as liminal sites for the investigation of the invisible institutional forces and influences that condition contemporary visual art practices? How can an apartment space, as a distinct form of socio-cultural environment, operate differently from public exhibition spaces? How does curatorial praxis provide a framework for making art through an extended, affective bond of commitment and friendship? These are some of the questions that are raised by Millet Matrix. 

Millet Matrix is a singular exchange between the Montreal-based artist Rosika Desnoyers, artist, theorist and curator David Tomas and cultural theorist Marc James Léger. The co-authored catalogue archives texts that describe the production and conceptualization of the three post-institutional apartment exhibitions Millet Matrix I (2010), II (2012) and III (2013). It features Tomas' essay on Desnoyers' error-based needlegraph work as a form of conceptual art and programming language as well as interviews with Tomas by Marc James Léger.

As an adjunct to Desnoyers' needlepoint practice, the commissioned work Millet Matrix as well Tomas' artistic interventions in the third exhibition introduced a potential mutation in Desnoyers' work, exploring the limits and possibilities of transcultural curating. A conceptual work by Desnoyers that is unique to this book completes the presentation.