Saturday 12

"Candide/Cándido"

Opening.
Colective

Artists:
Doyon-Rivest, Cooke-Sasseville, Jocelyn Robert, Jean-Pierre Gauthier
Jérôme Fortin, Raphaëlle de Groot, Claudie Gagnon and Dan Brault

Director: Claude Bélanger
Curator: Sylvain Campeau

From May 12 to July 15.

Candide-Cándido

Candide/Candido takes its title from Voltaire’s moralistic tale Candide, or Optimism, a philosophical fantasy that satirizes human nature. My intention, however, is quite different.

The critical ramifications of an artwork in today’s discourse are often measured in terms of its deconstructive aim, its interrogative powers. The work is designed to disrupt our so-called certainties and the formal conditions according to which an art object is presented and calls itself art. To view things in this way, however, is to acknowledge that these accepted certainties and formal modalities are still very much an active force, since we still feel obliged to denounce and deconstruct them. By feeling them continue to act, to form the backdrop from which the works must detach themselves, we are ipso facto admitting their meaningfulness, vividness, remanence. Do they not therefore emerge strengthened from the process of deconstruction? And are we not falling into the trap of reformulation, of reiteration?

To get around the problem in this exhibition, it thus seemed necessary for me to choose candour and transparency. The works of the selected artists are not presented as embodiments of deconstructive tenets. On the contrary, these artists generally prefer to espouse their themes directly, close at hand, and not to formally distance the themes and questions they wish to illustrate. We know this is more apparent than real. But it’s certainly not what leaps to the eye! The forms presented, the objects reproduced or created, the strategies employed are not, first and foremost, called into question. Doyon-Rivest’s advertising communication strategies, Jérôme Fortin’s books and paper works, Raphaëlle de Groot’s collection of objects —the magic of all these works derives from a level of familiarity and knowledge gained from our daily lives. In all that is presented, there is nothing that appears foreign to us. These objects, these ways of doing things, we recognize as part of our everyday existence. We approach them with confidence. And we see their primary meaning interfused with another imposed by the artist’s treatment.

This exhibition underscores this notion of community between viewers and art objects, as well as the shifts in meaning that take hold of the former when trapped by the latter.

- Sylvain Campeau, Curator

Bios

Claude Bélanger
Executive and Artistic Director

A self-taught photographer and founder of the Manifestation internationale d’art de Québec, Claude Bélanger resides in Québec City, where he works as the organization’s Executive and Artistic Director. The co-founder and coordinator of L’oeil de Poisson from 1985 to 1999, and the co-founder of Mirabile Visu and the visual arts production and distribution cooperative Méduse, he has a graduate degree in sociology and a graduate certificate in project management. He has been involved in several artistic and cultural associations on a regional, provincial and national level, and has served as a jury member for numerous events and organizations.

As an independent curator, he has put together various exhibitions, including Bestiaire Mutant, Machines et Machines, Deux générations Deux sensibilités, Corpus, Latinos del Norte (Québec section of the 8th Bienal de Video & Nuevos Medios in Santiago), Les 15 ans des Prix Videre and 25 lauréats de Québec en arts visuels (Musée d’art contemporain de Baie-Saint-Paul). Since 1989, he has participated as an artist in over 100 exhibitions in Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada, France, Italy, Japan, Madagascar, Mexico and Ukraine, in addition to creating permanent, architecturally integrated works. He has been awarded grants by the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec and the Canada Council for the Arts. In 2004, he received the Prix François-Samson for the cultural development of the Québec region. In the spring of 2010, Claude Bélanger was named a specialist in visual arts by the Québec Ministry of Culture, Communications and the Status of Women for its Policy of Integrating Arts into Architecture and the Environment.

Sylvain Campeau
Curator

Sylvain Campeau is a poet, art critic, essayist and exhibition curator. He has published five collections of poems, an essay on photography (Chambres obscures. Photographie et installation), and a Québec poetry anthology (Les Exotiques, Herbes rouges, 2003). His latest essay, Chantiers de l’image, was published last fall by Éditions Nota Bene.

As an art critic, he has contributed to such journals as Parachute, ETC Montréal (now ETC), C Magazine, Vie des arts, CV Photo (now Ciel Variable) and Spirale. In this role, and as an essayist, he has written numerous texts that have appeared in artist monographs, exhibition catalogues and foreign periodicals (France, Spain). In addition to these activities, he works as an independent curator. Since 1992, he has conceived and supervised some thirty exhibitions in Canada and abroad, as well as programming Espaces vitaux/Extravagances for the arrivals-concourse screens at Montreal’s Trudeau Airport, and taking part in La Saison du Québec en France in 2000 and the Liverpool Biennial in 2010.

Artists

Doyon-Rivest

Doyon-Rivest is an artist collective founded in Québec City in 2000. Mathieu Doyon is a visual artist and musician, while Simon Rivest is a graphic artist and advertising art director. Their practice has developed in the manner of an artistic trademark, the logo that constitutes their signature serving as anchor. Nowadays, the aesthetic vocabulary of business is universal, a language understood by all. The major brands attempt in countless ways to create emotional links with their target clientele, offering them not so much a product as an “experience.” It is this mode of communication and its channels that interest the duo. Over the last few years, their works have been presented at the Triennale québécoise of the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, the 4th Manif d’art de Québec, the Liverpool Biennial, and Québec Gold in Reims, France.

Cooke-Sasseville

The art of Cooke-Sasseville is tinged with humour—by turns absurd, scathing and overtly cynical. Through themes closely related to our daily preoccupations—the search for happiness, love, sexuality—their works connote the ordinary, the banal, but often assume forms and styles that are decidedly surrealistic. Out-of-proportion installations, menageries of orange hens, a pink cat and elephant—all are part of the zany world of the artists (Sylvette Babin, Esse). Their works have been shown at the 5th Manif d’art de Québec, Québec Gold in Reims (France), the Triennale québécoise of the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, and the Orange Art Event in Saint-Hyacinthe.

Jocelyn Robert

Jocelyn Robert is based in Québec City, where he works in audio art, digital art, performance, installation, video and writing. He has several performances to his credit, both solo and with Diane Landry, Laetitia Sonami and Bruit TTV. He has also released some fifteen solo CDs and collaborated on over twenty others. In 2002, he shared First Prize, Image category, at the Berlin Transmediale Festival, and in 2006 he received the Prix du Rayonnement International from the Conseil de la Culture de Québec. He has presented numerous solo shows, and has also teamed up with Émile Morin and Daniel Jolliffe on various installations. His works have been shown in Canada, United States, Mexico, Chile, Australia and Europe. His writings have been published by Le Quartanier (Montreal), Ohm Éditions (Québec City), Errant Bodies Press (Los Angeles), Semiotext(e) (New York), and have appeared in several catalogues, including those for Ars Electronica (Austria) and Sonambiente (Germany).

Jean-Pierre Gauthier

Jean-Pierre Gauthier is a Québec artist who has distinguished himself on the contemporary art scene since the 1990s. His hybrid approach incorporates visual arts and sound explorations. A virtuoso of the everyday, an artistic handyman, an entomologist of sound, Gauthier sees and hears all the acoustic and metaphoric potential in the found object. His kinetic and sound installations embrace such notions as disorder, organics, sinuosity and unpredictability. He received the prestigious Sobey Art Award in 2004 and the Victor Martyn Lynch-Staunton Prize in 2006. His musical projects and sound installations have been seen and heard throughout Canada, the United States, Norway, Sweden, Germany, Italy, France, Spain and Korea.

Jerôme Fortin

Born in Joliette in 1971, Jérôme Fortin lives and works in Montreal. His sculpture-installations combine the approach of curiosity cabinets (private rooms for storing precious objects in the 19th century) with the practice of mass consumption in the 20th and 21st centuries. Since 1996, he has given over a dozen solo exhibitions in Prague, Pretoria, Tokyo, Paris, Toronto and Montreal, and has participated in group exhibitions in Istanbul, Berlin, Bologna, Brussels, Paris, Cuba, Barcelona, Beijing and New York. He has also undertaken residencies at such institutions as the World Financial Center Arts and Events (New York), the Fondation Christoph-Merian (Basel), Fonca (Mexico City), Cité internationale des arts (Paris), Ludwig Foundation of Cuba (Havana), and Tokyo Wonder Site. In 2007, his works were presented in a solo exhibition at the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal. He was awarded the Prix Pierre-Ayot by the City of Montreal in 2004.

Raphaëlle de Groot

Raphaëlle de Groot was born in 1974 in Montreal, where she is currently based. In sites linked to art (art schools, museums, exhibition spaces), she creates situations in which visitors and students are directly involved in the creative process. Her works make regular use of multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary collaborations. She has presented several solo exhibitions in both Canada and abroad, the most recent of which were Chantiers (Le Quartier, Quimper, France, 2008), Il volto interiore (Z2O Galleria – Sara Zanin, Rome, Italy, 2007) and Raphaëlle de Groot. En exercice (Galerie de l’UQAM, Montreal, 2006). She has also taken part in numerous group exhibitions, including Rien ne se perd, rien ne se crée, tout se transforme (Triennale québécoise, Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, 2008), Rendre réel (Scène Québec, Ottawa, 2007), Negotiating Us, Here and Now (Leeds City Art Gallery, Britain, 2005), Just my Imagination (ArtLab, John Labatt Visual Arts Centre, University of Western Ontario, London, Canada, 2004), and « Nous venons en paix… » Histoires des Amériques (Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, 2004).

Dan Brault

Originally from Montreal, Dan Brault lives and works in Québec City. He studied painting and drawing at Concordia University, graduating with a BFA in 2002, and completed his MFA at Laval University in 2006. Shortlisted for the Joseph Plaskett Foundation Award, he has shown his work at major public galleries and artist-run centers throughout Canada, as well as at the 10th Sharjah Biennial in the United Arab Emirates in March 2011. He is represented by the Peak Gallery in Toronto.

My artistic practice is based on the confrontation and/or fusion of various painting genres. I purposely try to combine radically different aesthetics with a view to creating unexpected formal tensions, both on the painting surfaces and in the gallery’s hanging strategies. I find this approach to be profoundly stimulating, for the end result is based on spontaneity, boldness and risk-taking. This venture, it is hoped, reflects my desire to be free as an artist.

Claudie Gagnon

Self-taught artist Claudie Gagnon lives and works in Issoudun (Québec). Since 1985, she has been gathering, matching, piling up, trading, accumulating and fooling around with stuff—common objects of daily life chosen for their kitsch value. Her work takes the form of tableaux vivants and installations. Both delightful and disturbing, her installations vacillate between the ordinary and the extraordinary. Presented as silent performances on stage, her tableaux vivants are a sequence of linked vignettes brought to life by performers. The themes are inspired by history and popular culture, and the processes that come into play are lifted from the classical language of painting, theatre and music. Claudie Gagnon’s work has been shown in Québec, Canada, France, Italy, China and Mexico. Her two performance-installations created for young audiences have been on tour in Canada, Asia and Europe since 2000.

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