October 22 - November 28, 2015

The Dopamine Collective – The Universal Artist… Experiments in Reality

Visual Voice Gallery is delighted to welcome The Dopamine Collective, who are presenting the exhibition The Universal Artist… Experiments in Reality.

The Dopamine Collective is an eclectic collection of scientific minds with a common desire to shed their lab-coats and to embrace the philosophy of the art world. Each member of the Collective uses the training of their scientific field to create a unique body of work.

“We are non-artists performing a series of experiments, examining the art-world from outside.”

The focus of the Collective's exhibition The Universal Artist… Experiments in Reality is the representation of technological fetishism, and the art of anonymous craft created by nature’s control of the environment. Through their creative collaboration the Collective explores questions of authorship, ownership, and authenticity.

The Collective has an innovative approach to artistic authorship, which is expressed in their curatorial process: Each scientist may submit work to a committee within the Collective for approval. Once approved, that particular piece is assimilated into the Collective. Authorship is removed, the Collective then assumes both authorship and ownership. The piece is then stamped with the Collective's committee stamp and a separate embossed certificate is supplied with each work. The committee consists of the Collective itself, as well as members from the art world outside the Collective.

Luigi Pirandello in his 1925 preface to Six Characters in Search of an Author writes:
"Why not," I said to myself, "present this highly strange fact of an author who refuses to let some of his characters live though they have been born in his fantasy, and the fact that these characters, having by now life in their veins, do not resign themselves to remaining excluded from the world of art? They are detached from me; live on their own; have acquired voice and movement; have by themselves -- in this struggle for existence that they have had to wage with me -- become dramatic characters, characters that can move and talk on their own initiative; already see themselves as such; have learned to defend themselves against me; will even know how to defend themselves against others. And so let them go where dramatic characters do go to have life: on a stage. And let us see what will happen.”

As a biochemical puppet who chooses to love his strings, Dr. Stewart allows his audience to control the direction of the collective members. Work is made by his hands, but not by him. “It is a strange space to occupy, creating conceptual pieces that are driven by a response to the audience’s projection of what the characters should do.”

As Foucault so eloquently states in the last line of What is an Author:
“What matter who’s speaking?”

Dr. Sean R. Stewart founded The Dopamine Collective in 2011. Stewart is a trained scientist, with a DDS degree (1997) and a BSc degree (1994) from the University of Western Ontario. In 2015 he earned an MFA at the Lesley University College of Art and Design and now utilizes all forms of scientific experimentation to explore artistic expressions that reach visual conclusions. His constant quest for rationale is deeply engrained in all areas of his practice. Stewart finds the art in science, as he explores all wavelengths of energy to create art using photographic techniques. With x-rays, lasers, and ultraviolet radiation, he reverses the inside and outside world to explore the atomic constants: light and time.