Season 2012 – 2013
Inquiétante étrangeté et autres fantasmagories
Jeanie RiddleTenor
September 7 to 29, 2012
Vernissage: Thursday September 6 at 6 pm
Artist’s Talk: Friday, September 7 at 7 pm
The McClure Gallery is pleased to open its fall season with a solo exhibition of recent works by Montreal artist Jeanie Riddle. Working with ideas from the everyday or domestic in a striking and fearless way, Riddle makes use of formal painting, plywood, MDF, latex house paint, confetti, and tissue paper. For ‘Tenor’, Riddle presents a series of large-scale paintings in a space designed, transformed and constructed by the artist. The exhibition includes three in-situ sculptures as well as paintings within these confines.
Jeanie Riddle’s paintings and architecture break along planes of parallel lines, both conflating and upending ideas of space and place. The artist writes of her work in alluringly cryptic words: “Possibly, and probably meeting in layers, in color, in cleavage, direction and fractured form. This total architecture is described by the number of directions, sense of space, size of construction and the viewer within this space. The angles between the paintings and architectural form and the degree of perfection of the cleavage are also important to the space. They perform better than random”. The in-situ works in this exhibition reflect a keen and poetic understanding of the interface between two and three-dimensional form. They are spawned in the quotidian where a sense of alterity defines their impact.
Jeanie Riddle lives and works in Montreal where she completed a M.F.A. in Painting from Concordia University in 2005. Her work has been shown in numerous solo and group exhibitions throughout Canada and she received a Research and Creation grant from the Canada Council for the Arts in 2012. She is Director of the Parisian Laundry Gallery of Montreal.
30
October 5 to 27, 2012
Vernissage: Thursday October 4 at 6 pm
Invited Curator: Léopold L. Foulem
Curator’s Talk: Thursday, October 11 at 7 pm
The McClure Gallery is honoured to present 30, a ceramic exhibition featuring the works of 33 artists and curated by well-known ceramic artist, writer and curator, Léopold L. Foulem. Thirty years have passed since the founding of Interaction, galerie d’expressions céramiques. This exhibition commemorates and celebrates this unique endeavour. The Interaction collective was the only artist-run centre in Canada dedicated to the promotion and dissemination of ceramics, a non-traditional art discipline. This remarkable achievement was to last five years.
Artists who were invited to participate all exhibited at Interaction between 1982 and 1986. Of the thirty-three works on display, several were originally presented there and attest to the vitality and the diversity of the ceramic scene of the time. Others offer a portrait of the many facets that creative ceramic artists have been exploring since then.
The McClure Gallery of the Visual Arts Centre was deemed an appropriate venue for this ceramic exhibition; the Centre began as the Potters’ Club in 1946 and was the first clay guild of its kind in Canada. The gallery is thus pleased to be able to bring together such a remarkable collection of work by artists who have contributed significantly to the history of ceramics in Quebec.
Exhibiting Artists :
Suzanne Arsenault, Lucie Baillargeon, Loraine Basque, Jeannot Blackburn, Mimi Cabri, Thérèse Chabot, Dorothy Deschamps, Judi Dyelle, Léopold L. Foulem, France Gilbert, Denise Goyer, Deborah Harris, Michel Harvey, Édouard Jasmin, Andrée Lapointe, Esther Legault, Yves Louis-Seize, Denis Lowe, Denise Martel, Paul Mathieu, Virginia McClure, Susan Meindl, Richard Milette, Paula Murray, Matthias Ostermann, Christiane Paquin, Gilbert Poissant, Francine Potvin, Rebecca Rupp, Raymond Sigouin, Guy Simoneau, Michel Viala, Michel Vincent
Léopold L. Foulem has enjoyed a prolific exhibition career. He is the recipient of the Jean A. Chalmers National Crafts Award, the Saidye-Bronfman Award for excellence in crafts, and the Éloizes Award for Artist of the Year in Acadia.
David Sorensen The Ultimate Horizon
Exhibition: November 2 to 24, 2012
Vernissage: Thursday November 1 at 6 pm
The McClure Gallery is pleased to present the exhibition, The Ultimate Horizon, featuring the paintings of David Sorensen. Selected by guest curator Sandra Grant Marchand, these colour field abstractions represent Sorensen’s final works in a decade long exploration of the horizon leitmotif. We are honoured to exhibit these paintings, executed for the most part during the year prior to Sorensen’s death in 2011.
In 2004, Sorensen wrote, “To me there is still this celebration worth the paint and it’s about an open door in the artist that used to be called the muse.” While clearly aware of and influenced by the art movements and contemporary concerns of his time, Sorensen remained steadfastly committed to the pursuit of a “classical order free of irony.” He continually strove to distil light like Turner, to reconcile abstraction with the inspiration of earth and sky, to marry minimalism and geometry with the lyrical human gesture. His quest in paint now makes its claim upon us.
We are also honoured to publish an exhibition catalogue which includes over 40 images from the Horizon series, Grant Marchand’s perceptive analysis of the works, and finally, an appreciation by the artist’s daughter Verona Sorensen.
Born in West Vancouver, B.C. in 1937, David Sorensen studied at the University of British Columbia and the Vancouver School of Art. Moving to Montréal in 1966 and later to the Eastern Townships, Sorensen taught at the Montreal Museum School of Art and Design, Dawson College and, finally, at Bishop’s University in Sherbrooke from 1981-2000. Sorensen is represented by galleries across Canada including the Wallack Galleries in Ottawa, Moore Gallery in Toronto, Michael Gibson in London and Studio 21 in Halifax. Sorensen has exhibited internationally in Mexico city, Guadalajara, Basel, Milan, Paris, Chicago, New York City, Boston, Tokyo, Manila and Hong Kong. In 1996 he was elected to the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts. He was awarded numerous grants from the Canada Council for the Arts and from the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec. His work is represented in public collections such as the Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal, Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, Musée des beaux-arts de Sherbrooke, Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, to mention a few.
The Ultimate Horizon – David Sorensen
60 pages (40 color reproductions)
french / english
ISBN: 978-098659335-2
McClure Gallery, 2012
available: McClure Gallery
$24.95 +tx
Wah Wing Chan Noir sur noir
Alfredo Abeijon Quartets
Exhibition: November 30 to December 21, 2012
Vernissage: Thursday November 29 at 6 pm
The McClure Gallery’s December exhibition presents two Montreal artists. Noir sur noir features works on paper by Wah Wing Chan in the small gallery. Quartets, in the large gallery, features the abstract sculptural wall pieces of Alfredo Abeijon.
Wah Wing Chan
Interested in the interaction of gestural marks, textures and forms on the surface of paper, Wah Wing Chan uses acrylic paints on tatami Japanese papers, then chine colle on Hahnemuhle paper. Inspired by his surrounding environment, the artist searches out abstract marks that either bond well together or contrast with each other in a manner that confronts and incites reflection.
Born in Macau, Wah Wing Chan has lived and worked in Montreal since 1972. He completed two Bachelors of Fine Arts degrees from Concordia University, first in Studio Arts (with emphasis on drawing and printmaking 1987-92), and second, a specialization in Printmaking (1992-96). He has been a member of Atelier Circulaire since 2000. His works can be found in private and public collections in Canada, China, India, Portugal, Korea, Bibliothèque nationale du Québec, Atelier de l’ÎIe, Le Droit, and Open Studio.
Alfredo Abeijon
Alfredo Abeijon presents six quartets of different visual themes through the use of form, colour and depth. Playing with three-dimensional space, layers and shadows, Abeijon’s use of wood, oil and transparent paint creates different effects of space and luminosity within these abstract works. The McClure gallery presents new works from the current year.
Born in Argentina, Alfredo Abeijon has lived and worked in Montreal since 1972. His work has been shown in many galleries in Montreal including Galerie Clark, Circa and various Maisons de la culture amoung others and is part of several private collections. He is the recipient of grants from the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec and Canada Council for the Arts.
Linda-Marlena Bucholtz Ross
An Unintended Aesthetic: The Impromptu Stage / Scènes improvisées
Exhibition:: January 4 to 26, 2013
Vernissage: Thursday January 10 at 6 pm
The McClure Gallery is pleased to present the exhibition, An Unintended Aesthetic: The Impromptu Stage / Scènes improvisées, featuring the works of Linda-Marlena Bucholtz Ross. The artist’s large format photographs represent a meticulous and hyper-realistic aesthetic; they offer a unique perspective on the development and transformation of our urban landscapes.
Urban construction sites are increasingly ubiquitous, almost permanent fixtures of our lived space. The universal crane has emerged as a symbol of opulence, a reflection of a city’s economic well-being, as hotels, condominiums, roads and bridges sprout up like mushrooms. Bucholtz Ross’ photographs explore the ephemeral, unintended raw beauty of these working sites, revealing, as an underside, the poetic nature of an urban landscape in constant transformation.
Bucholtz Ross is particularly interested in monumental structures, often dramatic and accidental mise-en-scenes hidden in the urban environment. While our eyes scan these spaces unconsciously, looking but not seeing, the artist forces us to look again, drawing our awareness to that which is often ignored. Thus, these photographs render visible the traces of a city in progress before they vanish forever from the horizon.
Linda-Marlena Bucholtz Ross was born in British Columbia, and is currently based in Montreal. She received her BFA in photography and video from Concordia University in 2008. She has had solo and group exhibitions in Canada, France and the United States. She is a recent recipient of the research and creation award, given by the Conseil des Arts et des Lettres du Québec (2011-12), and in November 2011, she received The Concrete Contemporary Prize for Photography given by the Robert McLaughlin Gallery in Oshawa,Ontario.
Sophie Lanctôt
Zones
Exhibition: February 1 to 23, 2013
Vernissage: Thursday January 31 at 6 pm
Artist’s Talk : Thursday February 7 at 7 pm
The McClure Gallery is pleased to present the exhibition Zones, featuring the recent works of painter Sophie Lanctôt. Organized in the form of several series, both paintings and drawings address the subject of the transitory: the traveller or passenger waiting, in movement, in transit. Lanctôt’s subjects depart towards elsewhere, towards that which may be possible or impossible, even imagined.
Elaborated from initial sketches, personal photographs and newspaper clippings, Lanctot’s works explore the experience of displacement across pictoral planes that are ambiguous, ill-defined, but suggestive of places of otherness – “espaces autres” *- spaces which are unfamiliar yet which reflect aspects of our lived experience: departures, waiting times, transfers, solitude, surveillance, freedom.
The often acidic colours, the fluid treatment of materials and the accumulation and overlaying of drawn lines and marks, amplifies the sense of perpetual movement. The artist invites us to navigate these various public spaces where figures wander with suitcases and baggage, moving with a certain indifference and defining by association the physical spaces they inhabit: airport, stations, spaces of transition. Their solitary physical presence becomes a metaphor for interiority where time seems suspended. These isolated passengers occupy their own private “zones.”
Sophie Lanctôt lives and works in Montreal. She holds an MFA from Concordia University and has participated in many solo as well as group exhibitions in Montreal and in Spain. She has also realized a number of “One Percent” public art projects in Quebec. Lanctôt is the recipient of several awards from Canada Council and the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec. Her works can be found in both public and private collections. Since 1990, Lanctôt has taught at College Jean-de-Brébeuf in the Department of Visual Arts and Communication.
*Conférence au Cercle d’études architecturales, 14 mars 1967 « Des espaces autres », Michel Foucault, Dits et écrits (1984)
Leopold Plotek Campane
March 1 to 23, 2013
Vernissage and Booklaunch: Friday February 28 at 6 pm
Artist’s Talk: Wednesday March 6 at 7 pm
The McClure Gallery is honored to present Campane, an exhibition featuring the most recent work of Montréal artist Leopold Plotek. The approximately twelve large-format oil paintings are succinctly crafted, compelling and eloquent; they move unabashedly from abstract to figurative and back again. Their iconic shapes and translucent, resonant colours open up a wide emotional register.
It is difficult to write of development in Plotek’s work after four decades of accomplished painting; nonetheless the new work strikes one as particularly layered and complex. The paint handling and brushwork are expressive, jouissant. While sustaining their solid armatures and historical or literary references, the paintings speak to the vicissitudes of lived experience, of the body in time and space. For Plotek, collective history pushes against the private, becomes a touchstone for our imaginative and moral reflection: “Moments of high drama in the lives of poets, artists, and philosophers, their confrontations with authority, with fate, with their own dark impulses touch me where I live.” Of the exhibition title, Campane (bells), Plotek writes, “Bells are the joinery between time past and time passing, a gathering, a summoning…A key moment for me was when I learned how many bells were melted down for war material by Nazi authorities. . . .The silence that replaced their voices seemed to me a vast metaphor for the attempt to silence the voice of culture and civilization.”
An accompanying catalogue documents the paintings on exhibit as well as approximately 20 additional works from the last two decades. The catalogue text takes the form of a conversation between the artist and art curator and critic, E.C. Woodley, which affords us insight into Plotek’s preoccupations as an artist in our time.
Leopold Plotek was born in Moscow, USSR, in 1948, and immigrated to Canada in 1960. He was educated at McGill and at Sir George Williams University, where he was the pupil of Roy Kiyooka and Yves Gaucher, and at the Slade School of Art under William Townsend. He lives and works in Montréal, where he is also Professor of Fine Art at Concordia University. Plotek’s work has been exhibited in 28 solo shows in Toronto and Montréal and has been featured in numerous group exhibitions over the years, most notably at the National Gallery of Canada’s Inaugural Exhibition, at the Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal, and the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal. Plotek’s works are held by major public collections including the National Gallery of Canada, the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, and the Canada Council for the Arts and can also be found in numerous private collections.
Campane – Leopold Plotek
french / english
ISBN: 978-098659336-9
McClure Gallery, 2013
available: McClure Gallery
$24.95 +tx
Annual Student Exhibition 2013
Vernissage: Thursday April 4, 2013 at 6 pm
Exhibition: April 5 to 20, 2013
Exhibition Press Release:
Students registered in the School of Art’s winter session are invited to exhibit their work in our Annual Student Exhibition. The exhibition, which includes hundreds of works in a wide variety of media, gives students the experience of seeing their work in the context of a professional gallery. It also provides an opportunity for students and public to see the great diversity of creative activity that takes place at the Centre.
Nicolas Fleming Je n’écrirai pas beaucoup de livres
Exhibition: Mai 3 to 25, 2013
Vernissage: Thursday May 2 at 6 pm
The McClure Gallery is pleased to present the recent work of Nicolas Fleming. The exhibition, Je n’ecrirai pas beaucoup de livres, brings together a host of objects created, modified and/or apropriated that fluctuate between painting and sculpture, including at times a touch of the performative. The artist approaches the space of the gallery in much the same way as he does the materials with which he works – transforming and manipulating it in order to continue to explore the issues and questions that preoccupy him.
Those pre-occupations – both spatial and aesthetic – emerge from experiences that consitute his daily life – working on renovation projects, mounting exhibitions or other types of manual labour. Through his artistic interventions, Fleming launches a kind of commentary upon the formal rules and ideologies surrounding the act of painting, proposing new paths of research and solutions. For instance, he considers every step in the process as an end in itself. His work is in constant metamorphosis; he abandons each element only at the point where, in his view, it appropriately participates in his reflections.
The works in the McClure Gallery exhibition underline the importance Fleming accords to the physical reality of his materials as well as to the act of creation itself. Moreover, he interacts very consciously with the specific characteristics of the exhibition space, either working with those specificities in a kind of dialogical relationship or intervening to alter the space physically to better serve his aesthetic objectives. The unique aspect of Fleming’s installations, which readily evoke references to daily labour, provokes our reflection upon the gestures and decisions inherent in creation.
Nicolas Fleming holds a Masters in Visual and Media Arts from the Université du Québec à Montréal (2007) and a BFA in Studio Arts from Concordia University (2001). His work has been the subject of exhibitions at L’Écart (Rouyn-Noranda), at Eastern Edge (St.-John’s Newfoundland), at Galerie de l’UQAM (Montréal), at Caravansérail (Rimouski) and at Galerie Trois Points (Montréal). In July 2013, his work will be shown at Galerie Trois Points as part of a group exhibition in the context of Extreme Painting.
Inquiétante étrangeté et autres fantasmagories
Commissaire invitée: Véronique La Perrière M.
Exhibition: May 31 to June 22, 2013
Vernissage: Thursday May 30 at 6 pm
Invited Curator : Véronique La Perrière M.
The McClure Gallery is pleased to feature the exhibition, « Inquiétante étrangeté et autres fantasmagories » organized by invited guest curator Véronique La Perrière M.
The exhibition focuses on drawing as an artistic practice and brings together the work of artists Julie Lequin, Kristin Bjornerud, Martin Lord, Marigold Santos and Pierre Durette. The works selected find coherence and unity through their shared exploration of poetic narration, specifically as derived from the realm of dreams and the phantasmagorical. The theme of the exhibition is liberally inspired by notions of the “uncanny,” as developed, for instance, in the stories of the romantic writer E.T.A. Hoffmann.
Emerging out of a figurative drawing practice, the works of each artist express a very personal and singular pictoral universe, which nonetheless navigates a shared imaginary, a common and visible poetic. The exhibition seeks to underline particular artistic preocupations and aesthetic tendencies as evocative signs of our epoch.
Julie Lequin, a multidisciplinary artist working in video, performance, drawing and writing, explores themes that bring together autobiography, autofiction and questions of identity. Between narrative, poetry and humour, her installation of drawings emerges from fragments of both a real and a dreamed life. (www.julielequin.com)
Kristin Bjornerud is recognised for her delicate drawings, intricately pieced together from poetic narratives. In a language that draws from folklore, fantasy and magic realism, she presents an ensemble of watercolours and gouaches that bear witness to her pictorial universe and personal mythologies. (www.galleryjones.com/Kristin_Bjornerud.html)
Martin Lord drawing practice oscillates ingeniously between diagrams, pictograms and technical representation. His works often fascinate and astonish with their mysterious instructions. Using fragments of the body and architectural elements, the drawings featured in this exhibition propose an unexpected narration (www.martinlord.info)
Marigold Santos, continues her visual investigation into issues of fragmentation and reconfiguration in a novel installation based on two series of drawings realized over the last few years. The new work hones in on Santos’ preoccupation with crystallography and the notion of dismemberment. (www.marigoldsantos.com)
Pierre Durette’s installation combines both recent drawings and sculpture. The artist’s new body of work explores themes of ritual and ritual offerings. The codified images he articulates provide a glimpse into both abstract and poetic narratives situated precariously between the strange and the familiar. (www.pierredurette.com)
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