Sylvain Bouthillette Oeuvres récentes
Vernissage: Thursday, March 4 at 6 pm
Exhibition: March 5 to 27, 2010
Artist’s Talk: Thursday, March 11 at 7 pm
Exhibition Press Release:
The McClure Gallery is pleased to feature recent works by Montreal artist Sylvain Bouthillette. The exhibition includes large format paintings and smaller silkscreen prints, all of which continue to explore the artist’s signature vision: the interplay of a rich panoply of popular imagery with spiritual content and considerations; Bouthillette has been studying and practicing Buddhism for over a decade. The result is a painterly cosmogony that is both “in your face” – forceful, provocative – and aesthetically sophisticated.
Bouthillette’s painterly world is destabilizing. In several of the new works, he depicts a holographic geometry of space using a variety of compositional strategies. We are simultaneously propelled through warped time as we are pinned down, unable to budge. Much of his lexicon of images plays out on this shifting ground. He creatively recycles elements of his iconography – here, a strange gathering of squirrels or swarms of bees. Two phrases recur in the work like mantras. The words, “Laissez tomber la tête dans le cœur, le cœur dans le ventre et remontez le tout dans le coeur” swirl around or between the loosely painted oversize bodies of bees or alternately hug the circumference of a circular canvas where again, large format squirrels seem to tilt out of the picture plane towards us. A second phrase – “Each one teach one” – screams out from the centre of a large painting in thick red letters like an urgent admonition. The recent work at the McClure confirms Bouthillette’s reputation as a painter with his finger on the pulse of society’s pastiche of anxieties, but one who easily avails himself of any number of artistic strategies and philosophical perspectives that might yet act as wellsprings of meaning. These are intense, provocative works.
Sylvain Bouthillette lives and works in Montreal. He completed his MFA in painting at Concordia University in 1990. His work has been exhibited in Quebec, Ontario, the United States, France and Switzerland. He has participated in over 30 solo and 40 group exhibitions. His prolific artistic practice includes painting, photography, sound installation and music. Bouthillette is the subject of many articles and reviews. His work is in such public collections as the Musée d’art contemporain in Montreal and the Musée national des beaux arts du Québec.
Victoria LeBlanc
Director, McClure Gallery