Andreas Rutkaskas
in New Richmond

EXHIBIT

Borderline

Taylor’s Point Park | 103 Boulevard Perron Est | New Richmond

Andreas Rutkauskas, Calgary (Alberta) | andreasrutkauskas.com

For a number of years, Andreas Rutkauskas surveyed the Canada–U.S. border. He captured remote wilderness areas marked by monuments or perfunctory barricades, barbed-wire fences or a simple sign. Each of them relates a different story of a border area that runs for more than 8,891 kilometers. Along the 5,500 border markers symbolizing the Canadian-American divide extends the biggest frontier shared by two countries.

Borderline presents an inventory of its official crossing points. These were photographed empty of any human presence: despite the absence of American and Canadian border patrols, the landscapes recorded are not any the less imprinted with a tension peculiar to borders and their authoritarian reality. Sitting in the crosshairs of thermal cameras and motion sensors, these remote places offer a dramatic contrast to the high-security system that inhabits them.

Andreas Rutkauskas reveals the geopolitical chaos that seeps into the detail of a field, of a razed forest or of a closed road. Without ever being spectacular, he highlights the imbalance of the real at the heart of these areas where more than elsewhere issues both local and global are played out.

EXHIBIT AT RENCONTRES

Borderline

Andreas Rutkauskas mobilizes photography to create an encounter between landscape and technology and suggests a new way of looking at remote and natural territories.

A native of Winnipeg who has lived in Québec, he now pursues his photo work in western Canada. He has contributed to numerous collective and individual exhibitions, in recent years for example at the Canadian Photography Institute (National Gallery of Canada) in Ottawa and at Le Mois de la Photo à Montréal.

Denouncing the lines and faults of chaos

CHAOS denounces the bankruptcies of a present fragmented by conflicts. It reveals the faults that give shape to places and that affect populations, notably through borders, architecture or military zones: Youri Cayron and Romain Rivalan in Palestine; Debi Cornwall at the Guantánamo Bay military detention center; Nadav Kander in Russia and Kazakhstan; or Daniel Schwarz and Andreas Rutkauskas along the U.S. borders with Mexico and Canada.