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.

Un Soleil Quai 5160 – Maison de la culture de Verdun July 9 to Septembre 25, 2022 Maija Annikki Savolainen, Jaakko Mattila, Erik Nieminen, Julie Trudel

‘Un Soleil’ Writer: Mojeanne Behzadi

“Plunging ever more deeply into winter and night, I wander through my faery palaces of light. Another sun rising in my heart, I awaken a spring within, warming the world with the fires of imagination.” – Charles Baudelaire “Landscape” translated into English by James McColley Eilers (2010)

Light is a source. It is a source of existence, spirituality, science, thought, and creation. This exhibition brings together the work of four artists who connect in their exploration of light as a way to bring to the surface phenomena that are otherwise invisible, infinitesimal, and mysterious. Jaakko Mattila, Erik Nieminen, Maija Savolainen, and Julie Trudel work in a range of mediums and yet each is invested in working through different materialities that reflect light as a way to examine what perception systems reveal about sunlight and its properties.

Through meticulous examination and rigorous method, each practice reveals an invisible layer of reality just beyond reach that awakens endless possibilities. Here, the artists draw from contemporary technologies as well as timeless principles and processes to expand our field of perception and widen our access to phenomena, both natural and manufactured. Through mediated light, the works propel us into another world, under another sun. The electromagnetic spectrum and its chromatic aspects are here explored through both abstract and figurative painting, photography, and installation in a stimulating visual conversation between the artists whose individual practices playfully nod to one another and present new paths for exploration and creation.

In his paintings, Jaakko Mattila uses techniques of illusion to highlight and heighten humans’ limited chromatic experience. His latest watercolours present almost invisible tones that add a spectral presence to the otherwise bright white medium. His approach evokes a spectral field of vision, on the dark side of the moon.

Colour is the focus of Julie Trudel’s paintings, through the use of unique processes and specific materials. In her latest series, she achieved 3D paintings transmuted by light through the use of fluorescent Plexiglas as support, overlapping its colour with that of the walls and of discreet paint gradients.

In her practice, Maija Savolainen is interested in the photographic process as a series of gestures through which light is transformed from one state to another. Through her work, she explores this process of light reactivity using photography, plants, robotics, and text, showing the interconnectivity of both objects and living things and their respective ways of receiving light.

By experimenting with casting light on various plastics and transparent materials out in the world, Erik Nieminen begins his paintings through an exploration of the patterns and shapes and colours that projected light reveals. These initial moments of aesthetic interest intuitively guide the direction and content of each of his compositions. He also uses fragments of photos and videos in this process, creating alternate realities, at once figurative and abstract.

Salle de diffusion de Parc-Extension
421, rue Saint-Roch, Montréal
June 30 to August 21, 2022

Opening : Wednesday June 29, 5 PM
Artist talk and book launch  : Saturday August 20, 1 PM

L’installation Matière lumière présente une nouvelle forme artistique, fruit d’un croisement entre peinture, sculpture, art lumineux et scénographie. La peintre Julie Trudel et la scénographe Nancy Bussières allient leurs expressions artistiques pour créer un langage hybride fait de matière et de lumière. Les partitions lumineuses révèlent, masquent ou amplifient la présence physique des tableaux, au point d’amener le regard à découvrir des univers cachés au sein de la matière-couleur. Dans la salle d’exposition tamisée, les œuvres s’animent lentement ou rapidement, entrainant la suractivité rétinienne du visiteur, dont l’œil n’a de cesse de s’adapter au changement. Il est pris par surprise. Le subtil se joint au complexe pour exacerber les sens; tout fait sens! – Émilie Granjon, commissaire de l’exposition

Thanks to : 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, Galerie de l’UQAM, Arprim, centre d’essai en arts imprimés.

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.

CMYK – Phase 2

Acrylic paint, gesso and screen printing ink on Baltic birch plywood

Optica, Montreal, from May 12 to June 16, 2012

Two series of paintings coexist and mingle in the gallery space. The Ellipses en transit are painted drop by drop like the paintings from phase 1, but part of the circular support is left exposed. From one painting to the other, I varied the color order (YCM, CMY, MCY, and so on). The illusions of depth or torsion that appear in the painted ellipse are contradicted by the marked presence of the wooden support, creating a spatial tension. The Flaques are made from a superposition of CMY or CMYK paint drops, of which I altered the transparency. A hint of white paint is often added to the mixture, changing the color tone from light to dark and its materiality from transparent to translucent.

• Publication: Bédard, Geneviève, Julie Trudel : Projet CMYK – phase 2, Optica, un centre d’art contemporain, 2012, Montreal.

Thanks to the Canada Council for the Arts.

Photos: Richard-Max Tremblay.