BIOGRAPHy

Canada, Montréal

Nicolas Baier is a Montreal artist born in 1967 with a bachelor’s in visual arts from Concordia University. His work has been shown in museums and galleries in the United States, Mexico and Europe, and he participated in the Biennale de Montréal in 2000 and 2014. He has received financial support from the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec. In 2000 he received the Prix Pierre-Ayot for excellence in the arts in Montreal, and in 2015 the Prix Louis-Comtois for distinguishing himself in Montreal’s contemporary art scene throughout the previous 15 years. His work is included in national and private collections.

Central exhibition

MNBAQ

photographs and video

Data, 2016, Inkjet print, acrylic, steel.

At first glance, Data could pass for a large-format photograph
of a luxuriant spruce forest with a stream flowing through it.
The title of the work, referring to computer data, reveals that
it is in fact an entirely virtual landscape. This synthetic image,
created from scratch from algorithms by an advanced team
of computer graphics artists, presents a disconcertingly
realistic trompe-l’oeil.

Maquis, 2019, Print on mat chrome paper, anti-reflexive plexiglas, black plexiglas frame.

Procession, 2018, HD video with sound, loop, 16 min, 19s.

In the only video that he has produced to date, Nicolas Baier
seems to suggest that exponentially spreading technologies
will soon become inextricably and unpredictably interwoven
with human life. In Procession, he invites us to a meditative
voyage through a data centre that seems to stretch to
infinity, and through a luxuriant forest. In these two worlds,
it becomes impossible to distinguish natural sounds and
images from artificial ones.