Manon De Pauw
Intrigues
Curator : Louise Déry
4 April–8 September 2012
Opening:
Tuesday, 3 April 2012, 6.30pm
5 rue de Constantine
75007 Paris, France
Hours:
Monday–Friday, 10am–6pm
Thursday, 10 am–7pm
+ 33 1 44 43 21 90
From April 4 to September 8, 2012, the Canadian Cultural Centre will be hosting the first exhibition in France of the work of videomaker and photographer Manon De Pauw. The Quebec finalist of the prestigious Sobey Art Prize 2011, Manon De Pauw is one of the most prominent artists on the Canadian contemporary art scene.
The works in the exhibition Manon De Pauw. Intrigues describe the path the artist has taken since the beginning of this decade. Photograms, photographs, performative set-ups, single-channel videos and multi-channel video installations investigate light and the image in ways as varied as they are poetic. Manipulation of accessories, materials and colours, unfurling gestures, hands and bodies, recourse to various means of mechanical and digital recording, and use of surfaces of inscription like paper, tables, screens and lightboxes are all part of this protocol of artistic experimentation that generates a visual writing through which various ages of the image run like veins.
If Manon De Pauw explores the appearing of the image—with its measure of unpredictability, suspended materiality, narrative potential and motion—it is because much of her work is produced in the darkroom or the shadows of the studio. She has the ability to latch onto this fragile breath of the image as it emerges under the effect of light, recording its luminous fluidity to create the tangible body of the image that asserts itself before our eyes.
The notions of “teaching body,” “apprentice,” “proof,” “workshop” and “repertoire” in the works’ titles best define the undercurrent of research centred on experimentation and the image-inventing process. Spectral silhouettes, rotating bodies, effects of transparency and opacity, fleeting and sustained glows in rays of light, multiple temporal effects and sound presences fuelled by the arsenal of technology all create a fascinating merry-go-round that cannot fail to intrigue the gaze and renew our unquenched thirst for the image.
This exhibition is a joint production between the Galerie de l’Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM) and the Canadian Cultural Centre. It is part of a tour organized by the Galerie de l’UQAM with the support of the Department of Canadian Heritage, the Canada Council for the Arts, and the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec.
