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Ellipse CMCYCK, 2011-18, on display at Galerie Hugues Charbonneau, was painted by Julie Trudel, winner of the $25,000 Plaskett award.
MONTREAL - Summertime in Paris is almost over, and an exhibition will soon close that features works by Julie Trudel, the artist who just won the $25,000 Plaskett award that will help her live in Berlin for a year.
But if you can catch the last day of Summertime at the Parisian Laundry, check out a couple other galleries in the area. Galerie Division and the Arsenal are not far away and the Global Art League is having its first show at the Montreal Art Centre.
All is light and bright at Summertime in Paris. Celia Perrin Sidarous arranges objects against a white background and photographs them as still lifes. They could be product shots for advertisers, except the objects are ambiguous.
Derrick Piens pieces together strips of painted wood veneer that resemble deformed and stitched-together Rubik?s cubes.
Down in the dark basement space is Olivia Boudreau?s film of a couple in a bathtub. Megan Bradley, the Parisian Laundry?s director of exhibitions, said Boudreau hired two actors unknown to each other to pose in the intimate space of a bathtub. It?s an uncomfortable intimacy; the man mechanically splashes water on the woman?s chest and even strokes her breast a few times. The woman smiles a bit uncertainly a couple times, but nothing breaks the uneasy silence.
Galerie Division is inside the Arsenal, which always has at least two exhibitions even with the departure of Galerie Ren? Blouin for Old Montreal. The long passageway to Division is a showcase for the Majudia collection.
The exhibition is a changing one, but the day I visited, works by Nicolas Baier, Fran?ois Lacasse, Daniel Richter, Marc S?guin, Dil Hildebrand and Evan Penny were on display. So was Maskull Lassere?s Four Foot Length, a maple bough carved in the middle to expose a skeletal spine.
Division is showing work by Michel de Broin, Sarah Anne Johnson and John Brown, a Toronto painter who makes black and white paintings with spots of colour tints.
Brown builds up layers of paint on wood panels and scrapes off most of it before applying more paint, Galerie director Dominique Toutant said. Scraping is so soothing to the artist that Brown paints to its recorded sound, Toutant said. The process of painting and scraping is repeated until an image develops.
Sarah Anne Johnson is an artist in the realm of relational esthetics. For the body of work shown in Arctic Wonderland, Johnson went on a polar expedition in a sailing vessel.
She added splashes of photo-retouching colour to her photographs, creating scenes of apparent fireworks in the sunlit midsummer polar nights, an artificial aurora borealis and unnecessary addition to a scene of stark beauty.
A couple blocks away, the Montreal Art Centre is exhibiting entries in its Global Art League competition. About 80 artists from around the world, including members who rent space in the art centre, are competing for $2,000 in prizes.
The art league is the brainchild of Allan Diamond, who founded the art centre and rents studio space to about 50 local artists. Their individual spaces are small but open, and half the building is common area, including a lounge and gallery.
Diamond said he painted as a youth, but stopped during his career in real estate and marketing. But in 1997, his wife gave him a box of paints, and he started taking art classes, where he realized the importance for artists to feel a sense of community.
Diamond decided to build his own art community in a building at the corner of William and des Seigneurs Sts. Some members are hobbyists, others are emerging professional artists, he said.
And there is Barry MacPherson, a long-time artist who does psychological portraits in an exacting, precise style.
MacPherson was almost alone in the building on a hot summer day, working on an oil painting with the words ?Push Back? inscribed. It?s time for people to stand up and push back, he said.
Standing up for oneself resonates throughout the artistic realm.
?To be a painter, you have to fight for it and be strident in your convictions,? said Landon Mackenzie, an artist who is represented by Art 45 and who co-ordinates the Plaskett award for the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts.
That description certainly fits Trudel, the abstract painter who won the $25,000 national award for her painstaking experiments in pouring inks, drop by drop, to discover how colours combine with the physical qualities of paint to create an effect she likes.
Trudel understands that painting is a language, Mackenzie said in an interview. ?Julie is using digital and screen-based processes to build her own language that references and updates Quebec abstraction,? she said. ?She has a good sense of art history ? it both supports and challenges her.?
Hugues Charbonneau, whose gallery is currently showing the work of Trudel and three other artists, said Trudel addresses the mechanical and digital roots of contemporary images, up to how billboards are printed. Her abstract painting also refers to Claude Tousignant?s targets and Guido Molinari?s investigations into colour shifts, he said.
She exercises quality control over every aspect of her work, from the height and angles of how her work is hung, right down to the press release, Charbonneau said.
?She never turns off the idea machine.?
Point, line, plane, point, line, plane, point, line, plane, with work by Julie Trudel and others, continues until Aug. 8 at Galerie Hugues Charbonneau, 372 Ste-Catherine St. W, Suite 308. Information: huguescharbonneau.com, julietrudel.ca and joeplaskett.com.
Summertime in Paris continues until Saturday, Aug. 3 at Parisian Laundry, 3550 St-Antoine St. W. Information: parisianlaundry.com.
An exhibition of works by Michel de Broin, John Brown and Sarah Anne Johnson continues until Aug. 31 at Galerie Division, 2020 William St. Information: galeriedivision.com.
The Global Art League exhibition of emerging and professional artists continues until Aug. 17 at the Montreal Art Centre, 1844 William St. Information: montrealartcentre.com.
john.o.pohl@gmail.com
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Source: http://www.montrealgazette.com/entertainment/Summertime+Paris+plays+with+light+intimacy/8738056/story.html
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