Anthropocene/Capitalocene

This publication traces the evolution of Oli Sorenson's work through a body of digital works produced between 2019 and 2022, inaugurating a series of exhibitions in Quebec during the same period. Christine Blais details the ups and downs of this journey with aplomb, starting with the theoretical underpinnings guiding the artist's practice, and then moving on to a visual analysis of the multiple variations of his studio production, where he transposes his digital images to a variety of media - on paper, canvas, video, and NFT - to better disseminate them.

From the windows of multiple venues, Sorenson's works and maneuvers are multiplied to address the formal issues of geometric abstraction, to draw up strategies of creative appropriation, as well as to establish a narrative about climate change and question the economic system that underlies our time. Sorenson uses the neologism Anthropocene to weave a narrative that continues from exhibition to exhibition, naming the impact of human activities on the earth's ecology. Made with extremely bright colors and very simple shapes, the works display a hybrid style, merging the square layout of Instagram with the pixelated landscapes of Minecraft and the geometric canvases of Peter Halley.

Oli Sorenson

Oli Sorenson (Olivier Sorrentino) was born in Los Angeles in 1969. He lived in London between 1999 and 2010, where he began a career as a VJ (video jockey), before appearing at numerous digital art festivals. Since his return to Montreal in 2010, he has been deploying a "remix art", to accommodate a wide variety of techniques (drawing, painting, prints, video, NFT), and to accommodate a creation of tangible as well as virtual objects. In 2017, he completed his PhD at Concordia University, whose thesis is entitled "The Material Conditions of Immaterial Art".

Christine Blais

Christine Blais is a PhD candidate at the University of Montreal. Her research focuses on the art market in the digital age, and how works on the blockchain can inflect the conventions of the contemporary art world. She is a lecturer in Art Economics at the Université de Montréal, has worked in cultural philanthropy at the MBAM Foundation, and has served as Executive Director of the AGAC.CHRISTINE BLAIS is a PhD candidate at the Université de Montréal. D. candidate at the Université de Montréal. Her research focuses on the art market in the digital age, and how works on the blockchain can change the conventions of the contemporary art world. She is a lecturer in Art Economics at the Université de Montréal, has worked in cultural philanthropy at the MBAM Foundation, and has served as Executive Director of the AGAC.

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