Les glaneurs de velléités

From abstraction to symbolism

1.05.25 - 8.06.25

In the antechamber of painting, somewhere between its ineradicable specificity and the object it depicts, meaning and the bearer of meaning, the symbol, appear. The avant-gardes of the twentieth century sowed the seeds of this field taut between two impossibilities. The task of today's painters is to negotiate the profound contradictions bequeathed to us by this heroic, fallen heritage, and to bring it back to life.

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Étienne Zack, Demian Flores, David Bellemare and Méganne Voghell explore this territory, illuminating it through different modalities of memory. June Gutman, Catherine Bond, David Bellemare and Pierre Durette deploy the surrealist imagination, revived by contemporary considerations, while Johannie Lemire vivisects reality to offer new territories to the voracity of her virtuosity.

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From cubism to abstract expressionism, geometric abstraction to surrealism, constructivism, hyperrealism and art brut, these artists cultivate the land left fallow by the utopians of modernity. Painting is so often reborn from its ashes that it's reasonable to think that its vitality is linked to its oft-declared death.