Festival Art Souterrain
Exhibition place
Activities
Fiat Lux, 2025
Packaging and cupholders made of moulded pulp, cardboard, mirror, LED lighting
Made entirely from recycled moulded pulp packaging, Fiat Lux is a sculptural installation that, through its form and components, becomes a kind of ‘temple of the mundane.’ Diverted from their initial utilitarian function, these disposable materials reveal new aesthetic and symbolic modalities. The assembling of recycled cardboard, coupled with a mirror and a beam of light, underscores the tensions between material fragility and sculptural monumentality, and allows us to explore to what capacity waste can attain the status of artifact.
The work evokes both architectural references from ancient civilizations and the modular aspect of contemporary technological infrastructure, such as data centers.
Rising towards the sky, this structure, imbued with the universal symbolism of light, creates a space for contemplation and reflection that puts into perspective a range of concepts such as value, material memory, manufacturing systems, collective imagination, and transformation within contemporary societies.
Biography
Originally from Spain, Boris Pintado is a multidisciplinary artist based in Montreal. His practice, centered on sculpture, illustration, and installation, draws on a dialogue between architecture, the natural sciences, geography, family history, and foundational myths. Across this constellation of influence, he develops narratives that interrogate the way in which humans inhabit the world, structuring, projecting, and transforming, while paying particular attention to the relationships between materiality, space, and culture.
He holds a bachelor’s degree in Environmental Design, and will be completing a master’s degree in Visual and Media Arts from the University of Quebec in Montreal (UQÀM) in 2026. His work has been presented in multiple museums and exhibition centres across Québec, most notably at the Maison des arts de Laval, Centre national d’expositions de Jonquière, and Musée des beaux-arts de Mont-Saint-Hilaire, as well as in major public screening contexts such as Plural, Future Fair (New York), and Art Toronto.
Special thanks to: Ariane Plante, curator of the exhibition.