Art Toronto Fair
Oct. 26 to 29 2018
With Galerie Hugues Charbonneau
Booth C17

October 12 – November 9, 2018
Opening reception: October 12th, 6-9 PM
Project Space, NARS Foundation, Brooklyn

Having reduced my palette to black and white in 2012, I am trying, since 2015, to include ambient light in my work, by painting on clear acrylic supports (commonly known as plexiglass), using this material’s transparency, reflective properties, reversibility and plasticity. By adding light to the traditional aspects of abstract painting, I seek to create a visual complexity that speaks of our time in which the screen is everywhere. In this new project, I tried to reintroduce colour in my work, by ways of the support. I was seduced by primary coloured fluorescent plexiglass that throws light on its edges.

The challenge was to create a fascination for colour and light that would be mainly pictorial with this material heavily associated with design. Thus, I used the plexiglass as if it was the paint: paying close attention to the specific effects occurring in the material. To make the most out of it, I have given up patterns to favour gradients that occur when a thick coat of acrylic paint gets thinner and let the colour of the panel appear. These gradients alter the colours, make the panels opaque and reduce the quantity of light that gets through them.

I created 3D paintings that hang to the wall but juts out into the room to catch surrounding light. Contrasting coloured panels overlap, creating new colours, light effects, and veils. The wall itself, painted black under some paintings, changes their hue and enhance this layering. Reversible, the paintings look contradictory when seen from different sides. However, one can easily mentally deconstruct their components, entirely exposed. This power of a painting to create an illusion, even when its material reality lay bare, is an important part of this project. Between transparency and opacity, illusion and objecthood, these paintings embody contradictions.

My warmest thanks to École des arts visuels et médiatiques and Faculté des arts of Université du Québec à Montréal, the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec and the Joseph Plaskett Foundation, who supported the development of this project. I would also like to acknowledge the contribution of my skilful, intelligent and reliable studio assistant, Éloïse Carrier, as well as Danny Glaude, David Allard Martin, Jean Talbot and Mario Baillargeon, who helped resolve many technical challenges. Thanks to NARS Foundation for the opportunity to show this work.

Le Magasin, Arprim, Montreal
September 6 – October 13, 2018
Opening: Sept. 6, 5:30 PM

Myriam Dion, Marc-Antoine K. Phaneuf, François Lacasse, Micah Lexier, Julie Trudel et Studio Feed

Le Magasin is delighted to start this new year by a group show looking back at the last 3 years of editions printed by À l’affiche project.

Thanks to the artists and Galerie Hugues Charbonneau.

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.

CMYK – Phase 1

Acrylic paint and screen printing ink on Baltic birch plywood

Maison de la culture Maisonneuve, Montreal, from December 2, 2011 to January 8, 2012
Parisian Laundry, “Collision 8”, Montreal, from March 2 to 17, 2012

I restricted my palette to the four colors of print: cyan, magenta, yellow and black (known as the acronym CMYK). Paintings are made following a fairly straightforward process: liquid paint is poured drop by drop according to a controlled dripping method. As the paint is being poured, I observe the physical and optical mix of pure colors. For the Tondos CMY en déplacement series, the size of the support varies, but the painted concentric pattern keeps the same diameter. This creates an impression of cropping, which leads to an illusion of volume on some paintings. The Ellipses series shows nine possible variations of CMYK colors. Taken together, those paintings appear as if cut from a virtual pictorial space that would stretch beyond their limit. The two series are hung by aligning the centers of the painted patterns.

• Granjon, Émilie, « Julie Trudel vibration chromatique », Vie des arts, No. 226, Spring 2012, p. 99. (in French)

Thanks to: Fonds de recherche société et culture du Québec.

Artwork photos: Richard-Max Tremblay. Exhibition views: Julie Trudel.