Valérie Blass
Biography
Born in Montreal, Valérie Blass completed a Bachelor in Visual Arts and a Master in Visual and Media Arts at the Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM).
Work
A sculptor, Valérie Blass largely works with a wide variety of moldable materials, which she then covers with colour. At times abstract, at times figurative, her eclectic works refer to universes as varied as fiction or minimalism. The artist principally works with sculpture and video. Four themes encapsulate her work: the posture and the movement; affect, representation and abstraction; the primal gaze; the rapport between the form and the dressing of it. Her abstract sculptures greatly heighten movement: the tensions and torsions of the form gives them an anthropomorphic dimension, which often vies to entangle the distinctions between figurative and abstract sculpture. This impetus leads her to develop new techniques and to experiment with the limits of the materials' possibilities. "I strive to create tensions between representation and form, between the corporeality of the object and our abstract relation to the work."
Recent Exhibitions
| 2006 | Archipel, Parisian Laundry Gallery and Orange Gallery, Montreal La sculpture, l'espace et son double, during Exposer dans l'Îles, presented by Espace magazine, Montreal |
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| 2005 | Elle-même, Circa Gallery, Montreal Presque ça, B-312 Gallery, Montreal |
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| 2001 | Le regard des animaux, Dare-Dare Gallery, Montreal |
Compression et expansion en noir, 2005
Cochons en gris souris, 2005
Anthony Burnham
Biography
Born in Montreal in 1973, Anthony Burnham holds a Bachelor in Fine Arts from Concordia University and recently had a solo exhibition at Clark Gallery.
Work
The artistic production of Anthony Burnham escapes all form of classification. Often, it is characterized by research exploring different types of styles, techniques and formats. Through paintings and drawings, he presents work of a pared-down plasticity, offering a look at the everyday object, but also at the representation of volatile and flitting materials. The artist is presently working on a project entitled Out of Order. This title comes from a sign signaling "out of service," but also from disorder, over/under, the absence of rules, the rupture of order. This theme develops in a series, holding in common ideas of slippage, manipulation, transformation, moulding of the soft. In "Painting Live Smoke Sculptures" Anthony Burnham stages sculptures and smoke clouds, attempting to give form to a material that is uncontainable, ephemeral and soft.
Resent Exhibitions
| 2006 | The End, Queensland University Art Gallery, Brisbane, Australia | |
| 2005 | Sunday Something, Usine C, Montreal | |
| 2004 | Overlap and Rewind, Clark Gallery, Montreal The End, Queensland University Art Gallery, Brisbane, Australia Bonheur et simulacres, Manif d'Art, Quebec |
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| 2002 | Supurbia, Darling Foundry, Montreal |
Plateau, 2006
Wood and dust, 2006
Suzanne Déry
Biography
Born in 1972, Suzanne Déry lives and works in Montreal, where she completed her studies in Fine Arts from Concordia University (1997). Recently, she exhibited at the Maison de la Culture Frontenac in Montreal, and is currently carrying out a residence at Point-Éphémère in Paris (France)
Work
Suzanne Déry's works incorporate paintings, drawings, collages, and projections that weave connections between the everyday, popular culture and the memory of place. Through the expedient of small formats, often of a refined and sober aesthetic, the artist conveys to us an intimate graphic space, where the iconography is at times realism, at times fantasy. Engaging a metaphorical mode, Déry's works arrest and reinterpret life's successes, driven by the idea of well-being and the desire to perceive the extraordinary in small things. She selects objects produced by popular culture and a consumer society, such as commercial packaging, small papers from fortune cookies, grocery store flyers, and thus plays with sense.
Resent Exhibitions
| 2006 | Fontaine, Maison de la Culture Frontenac, Montreal Supermarcher, Point-Éphémère, Paris, Francel Collection 05, organized by the PSCHIIT association, Paris, Francel The End, Queensland University Art Gallery, Brisbane, Australia |
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| 2005 | Turkey Dreams, Darling Foundry, Montreal Sunday Something, Usine C, Montreal |
Fontaine, 2004
Cherry Blossom, 2005
Isabelle Hayeur
Biography
Isabelle Hayeur was born in 1969 in Montreal, where she completed studies in Fine Arts at the Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM). This year, she exhibited her work in several well-known, contemporary art spaces in Canada and abroad. She is represented by the Thérèse Dion Gallery in Montreal.
Work
A photography and multimedia artist, Isabelle Hayeur works with large format digital images. She also produces in situ works, public art commissions, videos, and Internet art. By using transformation techniques of the image, the artist manipulates captured images, with which she creates new imaginary landscapes that raise questions of how our natural and urban milieus are composed. This allows her to condense places in order to "mold" much larger territories. By adding additional dimensions and reference to the realities documented, the composition can thus reveal aspects of the world that the simple documentation can't always show.
Recent Exhibitions
| 2008 | Plug In ICA, Winnipeg | |
| 2007 | Southern Alberta Art Gallery, Lethbridge Musée National des Beaux-Arts (National Museum of Fine Arts of Quebec), Quebec |
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| 2006 | Habiter, Oakville Galleries, Oakville, Ontario Rencontres de la photographie, Arles, France St-Mary's University Art Gallery, Halifax |
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| 2005 | Territoires Urbains, Musée d'art contemporain (Museum of Contemporary Art), Montreal Prefix Institute of Contemporary Art, Toronto |
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| 2002 | Museum of Contemporary Art, Massachusetts, USA |
Succession, 2005
Jade, 2004
Michael Robinson
Biography
Born in 1965, Michael A. Robinson holds a Master in Visual Arts from Sorbonne University (Paris, France) and a Bachelor degree from Concordia University. His work has been exhibited in Canada and France. The Pierre François Oullette Gallery in Montreal represents him.
Work
Michael Robinson creates a body of work with a strong emotional tenor; sculptures, drawings, moulded pieces, and videos transgress certain dominant notions of art and the specificity of art genres. "For me creation has always been an abstract process. There is never an a priori defined subject" the artist articulates. His works directly and literally question the nature and creative expression of the artistic condition. By combining formal and figurative languages, conceptual and expressionist approaches, Michael Robinson pursues the steps where his works deliberately play with the candour and fragility of gestures.
Recent Exhibitions
| 2006 | Speed Giants, Flic-Flacs & Fly-aways, Circa, Montreal National Biennale of Contemporary Sculpture, Trois-Rivières La maison dans l'arbre, Galerie Liane et Danny Taran, Montreal |
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| 2005 | L'écho des limbes, Ellen Gallery, Concordia University, Montreal | |
| 2004 | Faits divers, Pierre-François Ouellette Contemporary Art, Montreal Avancer dans le brouillard, Musée du Québec, Quebec |
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| 2003 | Sweet Dreams, SKOL Centre des arts actuels, Montreal | |
| 2002 | Ultra vide, Darling Foundry, Montreal |
Blow, 2004
Cabinet d'eau, 2002
Jérôme Ruby
Biography
Jérôme Ruby has lived in Montreal since he carried out a residence at Quartier Éphémère in 2000. He completed his studies at the Beaux-Arts du Havre (France) and has exhibited in France and Quebec.
Work
By immersing the spectator in an imaginary, hypnotic world, Jérôme Ruby interrogates, through the diversity of the techniques applied, the contradiction and disproportion, the originality and superficiality of an art work. From the onset, the study of dysfunctional, organic forms has been an integral part of the artist's sculptural vocabulary. Yet beneath a game of contradiction, opposition and excess of representation, Jérôme Ruby cynically questions the "authenticity" of a work. He immerses the spectator in an imaginary world full of bewitching fictions, intimating to various fields of iconographical references: the style of the "western", folklore, rural traditions, multinational logos. Jérôme Ruby analyses, through a diversity of mediums such as video, drawing, sculpture, and painting, the disproportion, originality and superficiality of a work.
Recent Exhibitions
| 2005 | Organisse, Le Lobe, Chicoutimi Fort Mou, Darling Foundry, Montreal |
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| 2004 | Les alcôves vidéos du Tri Postal, Lille, France Coding party, le Fresnoy, Tourcoing, France |
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| 2003 | Le Fresnoy outside the walls, the French Cinematheque, Paris, France Time out, Festival of Independant Short-Films, Cultural Centre of Macao, China Mix media # 2, Video Festival of the 3015 Collective, Paris, France |
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| 2002 | Salon des prototypes, le Fresnoy, Tourcoing, France |
Fort Mou, 2005
Inuk Shuk, 2005
Klaus Scherübel
Biography
Born in 1968 in Bruck/Mur (Austria), Klaus Scherübel lives in Montreal. He completed his studies at Hochschule für angewandte Kunst in Vienna (Austria).
Work
The conceptual practice of Scherübel calls upon diverse mediums, such as photography, video, texts, books, and painting. He proposes a critical analysis of the various systems of cultural production through the fields of visual arts, literature, and the entertainment industry. The artist initiates statements on the idea of process by integrating different roles of behavior in order to distort and question the status of a work
Recent Exhibitions
| 2007 | Mallarmé, Het Boek, S.M.A.K., Gand, Belgium | |
| 2006 | Vitrine du Musée des beaux-arts du Canada, Ottawa Atlas, Salon du Livre, Paris, France |
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| 2005 | Mallarmé, Le Livre, Optica / Musée d'art contemporain, Montreal Un art de lecteurs, Galerie Art & Essai, Unversité de Rennes, France |
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| 2004 | Mallarmé, The Book, Printed Matter Inc., New York Untitled (The Artist at Work), Art Speak, Vancouver Photophobia, Art Gallery, Hamilton Fly Utopia!, Transmediale 04, Berlin, Germany Rencontres internationales Paris/Berlin, La Grande Halle de la Villette, Paris, France |
Mallarmé, le Livre, 1999-2005
Klaus Scherübel, 2002