Located in Montreal, Quebec
Oli Sorenson’s solo exhibition, «Après moi, le déluge » discloses a series of impactful works on the deadly perils of capitalism through a group of paintings, prints, watercolours, and installations. The title draws a parallel between our times and Louis the XV’s sentiment, the French king’s citation indicating his disconnect with what chaos he left in the wake of his excesses. The same phrase was later revisited by Marx to stigmatize the bourgeoisie of his era, as the leitmotif of the flood strongly features throughout history and human consciousness from past myths to our very factual and impending future. Biblical creatures were punished for their sins by torrents, and today with climate change, we are also faced with rising seas and historic inundations worldwide. Hence the mood of Sorenson’s show reflects our anxieties in the face of natural disasters and the weight of the Anthropocene—the impact of human activities on the Earth’s ecosystem—bearing down on our collective psyche.
Sorenson’s oeuvre depicts a myriad of humanitarian crises occurring as we stand on the edge of an ecological precipice. We find evidence of this pending collapse in African mining industries with Blood Diamond...
Category
2010s Contemporary Montreal
MaterialsCanvas, Spray Paint, Acrylic