Marie-Claude Bouthillier Matière à tableau

Gallery tour: Thursday May 9 at 5 pm
Vernissage: Thursday May 9 mai at 6 pm
Exhibition: May 10 to June 1st, 2019

The McClure Gallery is pleased to present Matière à tableau. Exploring the relationship between painting and textiles has been an underlying theme of Marie-Claude Bouthillier’s pictorial research for some 20 years. The symbols, gestural mark-making and compositions that she adds to the painting surface are done in an attempt to render the issue of pictorial support tangible. Her installations of the past few years have been the vehicle for expressing this continuing preoccupation 1.

The works presented in the McClure Gallery draw their inspiration from the canvas itself as it appears when hung. The paintings, with compositions reminiscent of a particular kind of abstract art, are constructed of overlapped dyed canvas squares. To assemble the works, the artist used the same method as in her previous pictorial installations, which involved superimposing and layering pieces of canvas covered in various patterns. For this exhibition, however, the pigment-saturated pieces are monochromatic and function as individual broad brushstrokes. The interplay of these juxtaposed and overlapping coloured surfaces is an allusion to the technique of impasto with its thick, layered effect. Handled in this manner, the monochromatic pieces simultaneously become support and medium.

Other paintings, mounted on stretchers, employ various painting strategies to convey the same idea of the loose canvas, its surface represented by a rectangle, either alone or grouped in a checkerboard pattern.

With the works in Matière à Tableau, the artist claims painting both as object and as subject of her practice, an end unto itself.

The interdisciplinary practice of Marie-Claude Bouthillier takes the form of paintings, drawings, installations, and card games. Marie-Claude Bouthillier’s works have been presented in major Québec institutions, including the Montreal Museum of Contemporary Art, the National Museum of Fine Arts of Quebec, and the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts and the McCord Museum. Marie-Claude Bouthillier is the winner of the Ozias-Leduc (2013) and Louis-Comtois (2011) awards. She holds a Master’s degree from the Université du Québec à Montréal (1997). She lives and works in Montreal.

1 Dans le ventre de la baleine (2010), La bonne aventure (2011), and Vœux (2016)

Read a review of this exhibition in Le Devoir