YYZ is pleased to bring to Toronto works by Montreal artists Claire Savoie, Jean-Pierre Gauthier and Hugues Dugas curated by SKOL board members Francine Lalonde, Anne-Marie Ninacs and Carl Trahan.
Together Dugas, Gauthier and Savoie will produce an organic vista at YYZ, with Savoie building a white circular room with bubbles counted, seemingly endlessly, by the recorded voices of a man and a woman. Jean-Pierre Gauthier creates a mechanical hygienic sound system out of soap that is cast in the shape of various household cleaner containers. These are attacked by water until they decompose, leading the coloured residue in and out of the gallery’s storage spaces through a network of systems set off by motion detectors. Due to the transparency of the materials that Dugas uses in his three-dimensional collages of vegetation, acrylic layers and drippings of dye, the works of the other artists are included in his vast landscapes.
Artist Bios
Claire Savoie
Claire Savoie first studied music before she became interested in visual arts. It is not surprising that she would integrate sound in her current practice. More over, since 1992, she has created work which is concerned with language, sound and space. This body of work is composed of installations assembled with physical materials, words and acoustics. In them, sound exists “in all its own substance, like a whole and distinct element.” For Savoie, sound is a sculptural material which she places in relation to other elements of the installation – video, objects or spatial structure.
Jean-Pierre Gauthier
Jean-Pierre Gauthier focuses on experimentation with materials and the questioning of their relations of causality. Therefore, temporality and transformation are important notions in his practice. His invasive sculptures soon became networking installations, as well as vehicles for water, air and sound. In a previous work he affixed an electromechanical device to a grand piano, making it an autonomous instrument. He has also collaborated with musique actuelle practitioners in the creation of sound performances. He still continues in this direction with the duo Travagliando. His latest realizations integrate all these preoccupations – transformation, circulation, mechanical movement and sound materials in the elaboration of multidisciplinary environments.
Hugues Dugas
Hugues Dugas has invesitgated the properties of painting at an iconographic and aesthetic level, as well as, an object level. First using images to work with painting, to go through the canvas and to open the frame, Dugas then expands out by creating images from numerous overlapping planes in a project called Le Tableau multiple. Recently, he has been decomposing and simplifying the landscape to bring it down to its simplest elements. He even renews its stereotypes in order to go beyond them and reformulate a new landscape; painted, inhabited, constructed and imagined by the viewer. Questioning one of Quebec’s strongest artistic traditions – formalist painting – Dugas represents another current practice which explores and explodes painting.