Alexandre Castonguay

Alexandre Castonguay works in new media. His work uses both obsolete technology and open source software. This choice provides a perspective on the artistic uses as well as on the discourse (both artistic and corporate) surrounding media art and the commercialization of the tools with which it is normally practiced. This critical point of view is informed by his role as a founding and active member of the not-for-profit media lab Artengine, which seeks to explore the artistic potential of new technologies while addressing concerns of inequality of access to media tools. Recent works occupy the uneasy space between the exploitation and criticism of media art practices. Works he judges as successful display a closed logical loop while inviting the viewer into an apparently open and interactive system.

Castonguay has shown his work in many national museums and on the international scene, such as the Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal, the Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography in Ottawa, Medienkunstlabor in Graz, Austria, at ARCO in Madrid, Spain, Art Forum Berlin in Germany, at New Media Beijing in China, at Piksel 06 in Bergen, Norway, and at the Centro de la Imagen in Mexico City. His work is included in important public collections including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, and the Canada Council Art Bank, as well as numerous private and corporate collections.

His work is supported by the Canada Council for the Arts, the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec, the Fondation Daniel Langlois, and others. In 2005, he received a visual arts research and creation grant from the SSHRC which he uses to develop interactive interfaces with students.