In his recent work, Raymond Dupuis has explored what he calls urban territories. These photocollages showcase fractured places, attacked on all sides by colours and signs bringing the surface of his canvases to life. While ascribing a fanciful origin to the genesis of his current work, his Machine à explorer les signes (Sign-exploring machine) provides an explanation for the Hopi-pictogram inspired signs that keep cropping up in Dupuis' work.

The Machine is in turns a fax machine, computer, photocopier, projector and many other devices, all thrown out of kilter with the precision of a mad scientist. Fed its diet of Hopi pictograms, the machine goes wild and skips across worlds and epochs, taken apart, as we'd say of a clock. And the end-product does relate to time: a xerography of time, grafting Hopi signs onto urban territories in a present time perpetually breaking out, as we say of laughter.