Paulette Phillips  The Directed Lie  2009 (ongoing)

7 - 11 March 2018

For VOLTA NY 2018 Danielle Arnaud Gallery is pleased to present The Directed Lie by Toronto-based artist Paulette Phillips. This ongoing project consists of text based and wall mounted sculpture, an interactive video archive featuring artist portraits made with the polygraph and a performance where the viewer is invited to test their capacity to conceal their peccadillos.

In 2009, Phillips trained as a lie detector in Baltimore, Maryland, where she developed interrogation and lie testing skills. Since then, she has been creating an archive of art world responses to the polygraph test, conducting interviews with artists in Berlin, London, Paris, Dublin, Montreal, Toronto, Vancouver, Halifax and Florida. In each interview, the subject is asked to answer 33 questions while attached to a polygraph. The instrument produces mechanical ink drawings that indicate “a knowledge” that resides in the body through the measurement of blood pressure, heart rate, and electricity. By bringing the controversial science of polygraphy into the realm of art, Phillips accesses a conversation about our complicated ideas of truth and judgment, about authority and language, and about the performance of the self.

For VOLTA NY 2018 Phillips will invite audience members to sit for a special round of 5 questions specifically devised for the context of the fair.

Paulette Phillips is an artist based in Toronto. Her work deals with the relationship between viewer and subject, focusing on witnessing, looking and reflection. Consistent in her work is an interest in the way psychological content is embedded in the physical world. Over the past thirty years she has worked in visual art, film and theatre and for the past 15 years has primarily focused on sculpture and film installation showing her work primarily in the UK, France and Germany. Her work is in a number of public collections including the National Gallery Canada, Oakville Galleries, the Museum of Modern of Modern Art and Frac, Haute-Normandie and in corporate and private collections including Gluskin Sheff + Associates and BMO Bank of Montreal. Her work is represented by Danielle Arnaud, London. Paulette teaches time-based and contemporary art practices at OCAD University.

For more information and invitations please contact us at danielle@daniellearnaud.com or visit the VOLTA NY website.

Paulette Phillips  The Directed Lie  2009 (ongoing).  Project documentation image: testing Ann Course. Venice, 2009. Photo credit Dean Baldwin

Paulette Phillips  The Directed Lie  2009 (ongoing).  Installation view from The Directed Lie, Diaz Contemporary, Toronto, 2012

Paulette Phillips  Have you ever cheated on your partner  2012  wall mounted sculptural depiction of polygraph chart drawing.  Powder coated water jet cut aluminum

Paulette Phillips  Have you ever cheated on your partner The Heart (HP)   2012  wall mounted sculptural depiction of polygraph chart drawing.  Powder coated water jet cut aluminum