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)