Justin Levesque
In his interdisciplinary practice, Portland-based artist Justin Levesque considers the materiality and tradition of photography in relation to information exchange and mediated geographies of the High North.
Justin Levesque (United States, born 1986), Geographical Problems (your files are too powerful), (detail), 2021, Phototex, vinyl, photographs, acrylic, PLA, LCD, and PVC, 175 x 120 x 36 inches. Courtesy of the artist. © Justin Levesque
His work is informed by seaborne artist residencies, including Eimskip and The Arctic Circle in Svalbard, as well as social media, historic photographs, and literature. To Levesque, the polar region is commercialized, mass produced, and overconsumed in the digital sphere, where false narratives and mythologies celebrate its earliest explorers, commonly framed as masculine heroes. Instead, Levesque employs a medial process to reimagine the Arctic from a disabled queer body in the 21st century.
The installation on view at the PMA presents a dioramic possibility of the Arctic, where Levesque’s interest in mediated geographies is visible. According to the artist, “mediated geographies refer broadly to culturally produced material (such as images, poetry, etc.) that are used to negotiate some aspect of the public’s epistemological understanding or experience of a place.” The concept of synthetic and constructed images is at the core of this work; for example, Levesque uses a generative adversarial network (GAN), an algorithmic architecture, to generate these artificial images. His approach reconsiders perpetuated stories, images, and travelogues, often found in National Geographic and Explorer’s Club, where subscribers read about the Arctic and new photographic technologies. Through digital mapping of the Arctic, Levesque assumes the role of virtual explorer to challenge the historic polar explorer’s imperial gaze and ‘queer’ the contemporary landscape.
Justin Levesque (United States, born 1986), (United States, born 1986), Geographical Problems (your files are too powerful), (detail), 2021, Phototex, vinyl, photographs, acrylic, PLA, LCD, and PVC, 175 x 120 x 36 inches. Courtesy of the artist. © Justin Levesque
Justin Levesque (United States, born 1986), (United States, born 1986), Geographical Problems (your files are too powerful), (detail), 2021, Phototex, vinyl, photographs, acrylic, PLA, LCD, and PVC, 175 x 120 x 36 inches. Courtesy of the artist. © Justin Levesque
Justin Levesque (United States, born 1986), (United States, born 1986), Geographical Problems (your files are too powerful), (detail), 2021, Phototex, vinyl, photographs, acrylic, PLA, LCD, and PVC, 175 x 120 x 36 inches. Courtesy of the artist. © Justin Levesque
“I make art about the slippery relationship between images and objects by using content sourced from North Atlantic/Polar ecologies, heroic myths, dynamic systems, ice, and the internet’s obsession with all things blue. My image-based, sculptural, and site-specific projects visualize tech-centered shifts in contemporary cultural paradigms—landing in a continuum between IRL and the virtual.”
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