Philippe Blanchard
Portal, 2026
June 1 – July 31, 2026
For Portal, a 2026 wall-work/installation for Fly on the Wall Gallery, Philippe Blanchard revisits a series of RGB patterned screen-prints from his archives, activated with computer-controlled LED strobe lights to produce the illusion of motion.
Interested in the storefront window as a staged, theatrical space to be looked at but otherwise inaccessible to the touch, the artist invites one to consider windows and frames as portals for desire, memory, dreams. Beyond a flat mural, this temporary wall-work erases the wall itself and replaces it with an pulsating moving surface, motion without end or beginning.
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Philippe Blanchard is a Toronto-based artist, animator and teacher. His diverse creative background (film production, digital visual effects, studio arts) has informed an interdisciplinary practice combining animation, installation, light shows, drawing, painting and printmaking. Recent projects include an installation for Fly on the Wall Gallery, a solo show of RGB textile installations at Waterworks and a contribution to FlashDrive 2025 at InterAccess (Toronto).
His projects include a residency and solo exhibition at Proyecto 'ace (Buenos Aires), an exhibition at Open Studio (Toronto), the production of textiles for installation at the TextielLab (NL) and expanded animation installations at the following venues: Atelier Circulaire and L'Avenue Mont-Royal (Montreal); ReformerArt (Shanghai); Toronto Animated Image Society, Open Studio and in/Future (Toronto); National Museum of Print (MUNAE, Mexico City), Chromatic Festival Paris, the Power Plant and solo shows at Arprim (Montreal), Glendon Gallery, Cambridge Galleries and InterAccess (Toronto), all featuring screen-printed imagery animated by coloured light. Philippe Blanchard's animation work has been shown at Rencontres Internationales Paris-Berlin, Festival du Nouveau Cinema (Montreal), Pop Montreal Festival, Mattress Factory (Pittsburgh), The Kitchen (New York), RISD (Providence RI), Hirshhorn Museum (Washington DC), National Museum of Women in the Arts (Washington DC), LACMA (Los Angeles), San Francisco Art Institute, Cal Arts (Valencia, CA), Institute of Contemporary Art (Boston), Impakt Festival (Utrecht NL), Center for Contemporary Arts (Glasgow), the Ottawa Art Gallery, InterAccess, Angell Gallery and AGYU. Philippe Blanchard has also worked as a commercial animation director, principally for Toronto-based studio Head Gear Animation. He has directed/animated spots for MTV, Oreo, Milk, Blistex, Sesame Street, and PBS.