Olivia Boudreau
Pelages, 2007, video sequence
Bio
A performance and video artist, Olivia Boudreau’s work has been widely praised at many recent exhibitions such as those at Optica, the Leonard & Bina Allen Gallery, the SBC Gallery and the UQAM Gallery. Graduating from UQAM with a Masters in Visual Arts and Media, she received the Pierre Amyot prize. She currently lives and works in Montreal.
Work
Olivia Boudreau pursues a reflection onto image, the body, experience and perception through research into performance and video art. Principally she creates long, laborious video sequences that place the body at the forefront. In allowing the human form to submit to the passing of time, she searches to establish an intimate dialogue between the spectator and the image. Her different installations then present an occasion for the former to experience perception in time. Long duration, slowness and inaction are all things that characterise her work therefore the major part of her production. Eroticism, intimacy, animality and the vulnerability of the body constitute the “narrative” framework of her sequences.
Recent Exhibitions
2010 B-312, Montréal
2010 BOX, Dazibao, Montréal
2009 Pelages, Galerie UQAM, Montréal
2008 Observations I, SBC Gallery, Montréal
2007 Vaches, Optica, Montréal
Milutin Gubash
Born rich, getting poorer, 2009
Bio
Born in Novi Sad (Serbia), Milutin Gubash has been living in Montreal since 2005. His work has been shown on a number of occasions in Quebec, Canada, the United States, as well as in Europe.
Work
Milutin Gubash’s approach encompasses photography, video and performance. He employs honest and untouched visuals that are often comical by means of their mannerisms. Humor is omnipresent in his work, linking the intimacy of his own existence through the systematic mise en scène of his family and close friends. Starting from real stories, the artist creates his own fictitious scenarios that grapple with notions of identity, memory, intimacy and daily life. His art challenges social roles and representations of domestic life conflict against notions of what is “real”. In order to achieve these goals, the artist often conducts precise investigations such as with Re-enacting Tragedies While My Parents Look On, of which a snapshot was chosen for Plan Large in 2003. x.
Recent Exhibitions
2010 Sagamie, Alma, Quebec
2008 Born Rich, Getting Poorer, OPTICA, Montreal
2008 Lots, Art Gallery of Calgary, Calgary (exhibit organized by the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal)
2008 Which Way to the Bastille?, Espace Virtuel, Chicoutimi
Adad Hannah
The Raft of the Medusa, 2009
Bio
Born in New York in 1971, Adad Hannah currently lives and works in Montreal. Hannah graduated from the Emily Carr Institute of Art & Design, Vancouver with a Bachelor in Fine Art and completed a Masters of Fine Arts from Concordia University, Montreal in 2004.
Work
Adad Hannah is an artist working at the intersection of video, photography, and performance. His video-recorded tableaux vivants restage the photographic moment and open a space for the contemplation of time and the human condition. His works have been produced in collaboration with such institutions as the Prado Museum in Madrid, the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, the Vancouver Art Gallery, and the Rodin Gallery in Seoul. His most recent project The Raft of the Medusa (100 Mile House) was produced in North-central British Columbia with a cast of high school students and a three-story high set.
Recent Exhibitions
2009 The Raft of the Medusa (100 Mile House), Pierre-François Ouellette Art Contemporain, Montreal, Canada
2009 All is Vanity (Mirrorless Version), BMO Project Room, Toronto, Canada
2009 A Starting Point, Zendai MoMA, Shanghai, China
2009 Here, Now or Nowhere, Prairie Art Gallery, Alberta, Canada
2008 Single Channel, Galerie Thomas Shulte, Berlin, Germany
2008 10th Anniversary Exhibition, SSamzie Space, Seoul, South Korea.
John Knowles
Coragyps Atratus (a work in progress), 2007, mixed media adoption record 2 of 5.
Bio
Canadian born Jon Knowles studied at the Nova Scotia College of Art & Design (Halifax), The Cooper Union (New York City), and Concordia University (Montreal).
Work
Jon Knowles is an artist who works across artistic disciplines, materials and methods and has developed an idiosyncratic approach to artistic research, where the empirical is never thought to exclude the imaginary, and vice-versa.Knowles has woven together his diverse interests within the art field in order to create a highly complex and thought-provoking practice. Knowles pays specific attention to contextual signification of the particular settings in which he produces exhibitions. His work, often ephemeral in nature turns on its head what art is, where the idea and intention is reconciled with the resulting outcome, complicating and blurring the line between art and life. One example of this was the adoption of a black vulture for the Dalhousie Art Gallery, where the process of art acquisition is levelled with other everyday administrative practices. Although highly conceptual, Knowles’ work retains a humour with reference to the artistic canon as well as to popular culture. Parallel to this, Knowles has also collaborated with Michael Eddy and Robert Knowles in Knowles Eddy Knowles.
Recent Exhibitions
2009, Making It Work, Leonard & Bina Ellen Art Gallery, Montreal
2008, Rien ne se perd, rien ne se crée, tout se transforme, Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, Montréal
2008, Die Wahrnehmung Von Ideen Führt Zu Neuen Ideen (#21), Kunstverein für die Rheinlande und Westfallen Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf, Germany
2008, Exalted Beings: Animal Relationships, Dalhousie Art Gallery, Halifax
2007, I Will Not Throw Rocks, Form/Content, London, UK
Guillaume Labrie
Champion des poids neutres, 2004
Bio
Currently living and working in Montréal, Guillaume Labrie graduated with a Masters in Visual Arts & Media from UQAM in 2007.
Work
Guillaume Labrie always starts the creation of his work by developing a strategy of presentation where the notions of architecture, of space and of the object must be physically integrated with one another. Thus the visual mechanics that are installed between the space of the exhibition and the objects found within is of upmost importance. These mechanics directly influence the form of his works, the choice of elements that he modifies to create them, their scale and quantity. In this process he designs a restrictive context of presentation or creation and is then obliged to modify the structure of objects like the places for which the situations call for. The aesthetic of his work presents itself like a formal situation related to the constraints provoked by the fictitious context of the room; their form is more relative in their efficacy than in the system which puts in place demonstrating how they are displayed. In this respect, it is the symbolic value of the three-dimensional staging and the way in which the elements of the exhibition relate to one another which becomes the principal discursive point. As an artist, he aims to prolong the notion of sculpture in the object and architecture, all the time revising the normal equilibrium of form/function/position of certain usual visual elements.
Recent Exhibitions
2009 In Production, Le Lieux, Québec City
2009 In Production, B312, Montréal
2008 Petites variations sur Iron Maiden, Espace Virtuel, Chicoutimi
2008 Le repli des oeuvres, Langage Plus, Alma 2008 Les envahisseurs de l’espace II, Action Art Actuel, Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu
2007 Les envahisseurs de l’espace II, Galerie de l’UQAM, Montréal
2007 Les envahisseurs de l’espace, Axenéo7, Hull, Québec
François Lemieux
We that are young shall never see so much or live so long, 2009
Bio
Since 2006, François Lemieux has developed a practice relating to art, design and architecture. His work explores and comments on economy, the relationship between the material object, the conditions of its production and the context of its demonstration and delivery. He is also founder of WE LEFT THE WARM STABLE AND ENTERED THE LATEX VOID (WLTWSAETLV). Francis Lemieux received a bachelor of interdisciplinary studies at Concordia University and then completed an MA in Visual Arts at UQAM. He lives and works in Montreal.
Recent Exhibitions
2009
Dig Holes And Fill Them Again, exposition, Walden Affairs, The Hague, the Netherlands
2009
WE THAT ARE YOUNG SHALL NEVER SEE SO MUCH NOR LIVE SO LONG, residency and exhibition at Le Lobe, Chicoutimi, Québec.
2009
WE LEFT THE WARM STABLE AND ENTERED THE LATEX VOID, residency programme, Montréal, Québec.
2008 The Middleman As Yet To Arrive, project exhibited on canoes between Amsterdam and Rotterdam, the Netherlands
Thérèse Mastroiacovo
Untitled (John Baldessari, 1971/72) 2002 - ongoing
Photocopies and liquid paper
24” x 36” x 9”
Bio
Thérèse Mastroiacovo is a visual artist. Her practice has embraced a variety of mediums including video, sound, installation, photography, sculpture, drawing, and performance. Thérèse teaches in both Computation Art and Studio Art Departments at Concordia University. She is presently on the boards of Optica, a centre for contemporary art, and Kore, an ensemble for experimental and contemporary music.
Work
Thérèse Mastroiacovo’s work is about art itself as an idea, artistic process itself as methodology. It is about the precarious relationship art has to its own definition, open, half open, or slightly open for re-classification at any given time. The varying degrees of openness create space in-between, a space that gives way to meanderings, processes, and procedures. Her work is situated here, in a space of potential created in the middle of existing structures. It is this – this large, large thing stated so, so plainly - that makes her work both familiar and unknowable.
Recent Exhibitions
2008 Tracatus Logico-Catalogicus. VOX Contemporary Image. Montréal, QC. Curated by Klaus Scherubel.
2008 Redrawing. RMIT Gallery. Melbourne, Australia.
Redrawing. Cast Gallery. North Hobart, Tasmania. Curated by Fiona Macdonald
2008 Conceptual Filiations. Galerie Leonard and Bina Ellen Gallery. Montréal, QC. Curated by Michèle Thériault.
2007 Art Now. Mercer Union. Toronto, ON
Josée Pedneault
Ile de Lantau, Hong Kong, April 24, 2007
Bio
Josée Pedneault lives and works in Montréal where in 2005 she completed a Masters in photography at Concordia University. Pedneault has also participated in residency programmes in Varsovie, Paris, Hong Kong, Scandinavia and Mexico.
Work
Josée Pedneault’s artistic work rests on the collection of images, the everyday and the sensitive links that are created between these images. Her photographic universe articulates around her diarist, contemplative and poetic imagination where she meets a variety of subjects. The theme of voyage, wandering or the nomadic life is a constant invoked in a metaphoric manner by the concepts that govern her work. In her projects, Josée Pedneault aims to show, for example that images allow to maintain a tangible memory (From Warsaw with love, Les Correspondances), that love transcends time (Pour que tu ne m’oublies pas) or that that only value of anything is sentimental (Con todi mi afecto).
Recent Exhibitions
2009 Entre deux, Les Territoires, Montreal, Canada.
2009 Différents points de vue, galerie Lilian Rodriguez, Montreal, Canada.
2007 Murmures, Installation in the church Saint-Thomas Aquinas, Mois de la photo à Montréal, Montréal
2007
Hong Kong Suite, Photographic project commissioned by the
review enRoute (Air Canada)
2007 Secret Splendor, Gallery 44, Toronto, Ontario
2006 Tropismes, Galerie Thérèse Dion, Édifice Belgo, Montréal.
2006
The Conspiracy of the Birds & other Unexpected Events, Contemporary Art Centre Castle Ujazdowski, Poland.
Sayeh Sarfaraz
Magic Never Ends, 2009
Bio
Sayeh Sarfaraz was born in Shiraz, the cultural capital of Iran, located in the south west of the country. She graduated from l’École supérieure Des Arts Décoratifs de Strasbourg France and she is now pursuing different artistic projects in Montreal where she moved in a year ago.
Work
Multidisciplinary artist, she questions herself about cultural identity - the direct encounter with cultural differences that offers an other point of view on others as well as herself. Along the way, she consigns the most ordinary examples of the consumer society that give life to her story and of her integration facing repetitive problems. Her youth – essential to her artistic endeavour - is always present through all the consigned objects artifacts or colourful toys. This is a world without anycensorship a world powerful enough to create and build new forms. The story of a forgotten way of writing that everybody knows without everhaving erased it from memory.
Recent Exhibitions
2010 Magic Never Ends "L'IRAN OF MAHMOUD AHMADINEJAD", ARTSPACE gallery, Peterborough, Ontario. Curator: Iga Janik.
2009 Magic Never Ends, La Centrale gallery, Montréal.
2008 Anonymous Drawing N9, Berlin.
2008
Gedonken Zur Revolution, Leipzig, Allemagne.
2007 Livraison Translating, Skol gallery, Rhinoceros et Séverine Hubard, Montréal.