Guido Molinari Foundation
3290 St. Catherine Street East (at Darling)
Montreal, Qc H1W 2C6

Exhibition: March 2 to May 28, 2023
Opening: March 2, 17h

This exhibition is the result of a residency of five Montreal artists (Karine Fréchette, Nicolas Grenier, Luce Meunier, Ianick Raymond and Julie Trudel) who have made colour a central aspect of their practice. Nouveau genre abstractionists, they readily admit that their relationship to colour is everchanging, influenced by the current chromatic landscape generated by nature, manufactured objects, natural and artificial lighting or that of screens.

Their artistic practices are considerably varied; yet the group shares a penchant for experimentation, hybridity and questioning the distinctions between painting and sculpture. United by the desire to capture the elusive character of color, they pursue research similar to the very concerns of the Plasticiens.

Come and participate in the dialogue created between the unpublished works of these five artists and the paintings of Guido Molinari.

The Foundation and the artists would like to thank the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec and the Conseil des arts de Montréal for their support.

Two-minute documentary video.

Matière lumière

Nancy Bussières
Julie Trudel
Curator: Émilie Granjon

Light scores on paintings comprised of plexiglas panels
Length: 25 minutes

Salle de diffusion de Parc-Extension, Montreal, June 30 to August 21, 2022

The Matière lumière installation introduces a new artistic form borne from the merger of painting, sculpture, light art, and scenography. Painter Julie Trudel and stage designer Nancy Bussières combine their artistic expressions to develop a hybrid language made from matter and light. The light scores reveal, mask or amplify the physical presence of the pictorial objects, to the point that the viewer’s gaze is led to discover hidden worlds within the matter-colour-light. In the dimly lit exhibition room, the works come to life slowly or quickly, leading the viewer’s eye to a retinal overactivity as it continually adapts to change. They are caught off guard. The subtle joins forces with the complex to exacerbate the senses; everything makes sense!

Émilie Granjon, curator

The artists acknowledge the steadfast support of the Salle de diffusion de Parc-ExtensionN staff, to whom they extend their warmest gratitude. They also thank the organizations that supported the production of this exhibition: Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec, Hexagram-UQAM, Faculté des arts de l’UQAM, École des arts visuels et médiatiques de l’UQAM, École supérieure de théâtre de l’UQAM, Galerie de l’UQAM, Centre Clark, as well as Arprim, centre d’essai en art imprimé.

Photographer: Morgane Clément-Gagnon
Videographer: Yves Dubé

In search of unseen colours: strategies to go beyond the use of colour in a painting practice by Julie Trudel

Wednesday, October 19, 2022
7:00 PM  8:00 PM 

In the magazine Vie des arts #267, Marie-Pier Bocquet signs a very thoughtful article (in French) on my most recent exhibition at Hugues Charbonneau Gallery.

90-second video

Réflexion, couleur et lumière

Sanded, folded and assembled colored acrylic sheets

Galerie Hugues Charbonneau, Montreal, from March 30 to April 30, 2022

Material, volume, colour, light. These are the core components in Julie Trudel’s practice. In contemporary terms, there’s a link here to the elemental concerns and exploratory geometries of Minimalism. (The work of Donald Judd, for example, is a key reference for Trudel.) Yet, Trudel’s shaped, sculptural forms, whether wall-mounted or freestanding, channel these perceptual elements into works that expand beyond the fundamentals. It’s a process as deeply informed by her sensitivities as a painter as it is by an abiding curiosity in both the technical complexities and expansive potential of form and luminosity. Consider the triptych Triptyque spécifique, where thin surface layers of backing paint and mirrored coating have been selectively removed from industrial-grade, coloured Plexiglas panels, which are then set in triangular compositions that extend horizontally from the gallery wall. Or Polyptyque spécifique with its heat-molded lengths of red, blue, and yellow mirrored Plexiglas rising from the gallery floor in a screen of accumulated form. Ambient light is the active agent, seeping through and reflecting off Trudel’s angular surfaces and open volumes to create luminous plays of colour and shadow in varying intensities (Trudel calls it “painting without paint”) while at the same time implicating the viewers in their own mirrored presence. Think of these, perhaps, as a series of experimental proposals or studies in compositional contradiction, where the infinite becomes finite, and the finite becomes infinite. — Bryne McLaughlin

• Exhibition press release, Galerie Hugues Charbonneau

The artist warmly thanks École des arts visuels et médiatiques and Faculté des arts of Université du Québec à Montréal, who supported the development of this project. She would also like to acknowledge the invaluable contribution of the various studio assistants who took part in the project: Éloïse Carrier, Raphaëlle Groulx-Julien, Vincent Lussier and Maria Claudia Quijano. The technical support of Mario Baillargeon, Alexandre Bérubé, Danny Glaude, Olivier Heaps-Drolet, Geneviève Le-Guerrier-Aubry and Christine Terreault was essential as well.

Photographer: Alex Pouliot

2-minute video

Noir d’ivoire et blanc de titane – couleur et lumière

Acrylic paint on folded and assembled colored acrylic sheets

Noir d’ivoire et blanc de titane – Transparence et distorsion

Acrylic paint and gesso on acrylic panels

Galerie Hugues Charbonneau, Montreal, from April 16 to May 28, 2016
Anna Leonowens Gallery, NSCAD University, Halifax, from November 17 to 28, 2015

Each piece is created on a very thin sheet of Plexiglas painted on one side before being bent into three sections through thermoforming. Two sections are painted in flat black tints, giving them a mirror-like quality, or in white, which reflects light. The third section is clear and covered in a pattern of translucent dots that seem to break away from the surface, producing the illusion of movement and depth. The folding of the two panels on either side of the central one produces a complex interplay of reflections between the three sections, while the concave shape it creates captures light and multiplies the effect of transparency or distortion within the cluster of dots. The choice of Plexiglas has deepened my research into the materiality of colour and light. The painting’s presentation in the gallery allows viewers to experience their near-sculptural nature as they extend into the exhibition space, and to witness how dramatically their appearance shifts depending on the angle of view.

• Exhibition press release

• Interview with NSCAD University blog about my research residency there in the fall 2015.

All my gratitude to the Joseph Plaskett Foundation, the Triangle Arts Association, NSCAD University and the Robert Pope Foundation, who supported the development of this new project. My warmest thanks to my skilful and reliable studio assistants, Katie Lesser and Arkadi Lavoie Lachapelle, as well as Donald Thompson, Martin Schop and Atelier Clark, who helped resolve many technical challenges.

Photos: Guy L’Heureux

Noir d’ivoire et blanc de titane – Tableaux grand format

Acrylic paint and gesso on acrylic panel

Galerie des Étables, Bordeaux, France, from December 11, 2014 to January 24, 2015

Choosing to paint exclusively in black and white represented a devious challenge: borrow a constraint from optical painters I admire while using opposite pictorial processes. Therefore, instead of deliberately painting colour patterns, I allowed matter itself to (de)form them. In my most recent project, I used thin flexible plexiglass panels. With my assistant’s help, I covered these supports with fresh paint and manipulated them in order to induce a displacement of liquid paint. The pattern of dots and trails that is generated by this process traces contradictory movements within the painting.

• Camille, Marc, « Dans les galeries : peinture-mouvement », Junkpage, #19, January 2015, Bordeaux, p. 15. (in French)

Thanks to: Centre Clark (Montreal) and the wonderful team at Zébra3 (Bordeaux) for being so welcoming and supportive. Above all, special thanks to Amélie Boileux for her invaluable contribution to this project.

Photos: Jean-Christophe Garcia.

Noir d’ivoire et blanc de titane

Acrylic paint and gesso on MDF, mounted on Baltic birch plywood

Maison de la culture Notre-Dame-de-Grâce, Montreal, from January 23 to March 9, 2014

This series of paintings was created using ivory black and titanium white pigments that were diluted with a great quantity of acrylic medium in order to make them translucent. Stimulated by the challenge arising from this constraint, I sought to let an intense visual depth emerge, beyond the simplicity of grayscale. The superposition of a fine coat of liquid color on black or white panels allows the emergence, through transparency, of very peculiar shades of black, brown and gray. A dotted pattern with trails reflects the displacement of paint on a flexible support that was curved. The result is a corpus of works that is both simple and complex, optical and material, controlled and unpredictable.

• Clément, Éric, « La peinture comme expérience », La Presse+, February 27, 2014, arts section, screen 13. (in French)

Thanks to: Darling Foundry and Astérides.

Photos: Martin Désilets.

Noir de fumée et blanc de titane

Acrylic paint and gesso on Baltic birch plywood

Galerie Hugues Charbonneau, Montreal, from November 9 to December 14, 2013
L’imagier, Gatineau, from January 17 to March 9, 2014
Galerie Colline, Edmundston, New Brunswick, from September 13 to October 20, 2013

These paintings were created using exclusively lampblack and titanium white pigments. The pure colors were simply diluted with a great quantity of gloss acrylic medium. By varying their degree of transparency and opacity, I was surprised to see a wide array of grays, with hints of color ranging from blue to brown, appear. Every series was created using a dripping process, which induces a predictable yet unique pattern. I used the various combinations of a color range limited to three shades of black and three shades of white, paying attention to the moments where a unified surface takes shape, while still hinting at the underlying layers below.

• Press Release, Galerie Hugues Charbonneau

• Charron, Marie-Ève, « Un programme en noir et blanc », Le Devoir, November 30, 2013, E9. (in French)

• Cucchi, Maud, « Tons et textures à L’imagier », Le Droit, February 1, 2014. (in French)

Thanks to: Est-Nord-Est artist residency and Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec.

Photos: Éliane Excoffier and Martin Désilets.