Exhibition “Tragi —”
About the exhibition
Curator: Jean-Michel Quirion
Artist: Hugo Gaudet-Dion
Starting January 17, 2020, L’Imagier will be presenting the Tragi — exhibition by artist Hugo Gaudet-Dion in collaboration with curator Jean-Michel Quirion. The gallery is proud to support the presentation of a Gatineau artist and the research work of an emerging curator also based in the Outaouais region.
The show will feature recent drawings and sculptures alongside older ones, creating unique and unusual associations that reflect the artist’s zany world. Gaudet-Dion’s work is characterized by the staging of expressive figures, beings that curator Jean-Michel Quirion describes as “quirky and unconventional.” His drawings are scribbled on found paper using impulsive gestures that produce powerful pencil strokes depicting ramshackle, skeletal figures steeped in anguish. Quirion explains: “the emaciated bodies are thus cast off and condemned in unlikely caricatured compositions, in a reality altered by countless expressive cross-hatchings. A human presence is felt in each morbid chaos, underscoring the artist’s ill-fated impulses.”
To probe this imaginary world oscillating between the tragic and the comic, the curator uses a presentation system offering exclusive (front to back and vice versa) views of the artist’s two- and three-dimensional works. Composed of a series of filamentary metal structures deployed in space, the installation allows the works to be juxtaposed or superimposed to bring out the expressiveness and intensity of the artist’s gesture.
As the curator succinctly puts it, the exhibition is a celebration of the tragic-comic-cynical-dramatic-grotesque-traumatic imagination that characterizes Hugo Gaudet-Dion’s work.
Activities
Opening: January 17, 2020 / 6 p.m.
Cultural mediation : Guided visits on request during opening hours. Activity bag for families. School workshops available by reservation at education@limagier.qc.ca.
Bios
Hugo Gaudet-Dion is a multidisciplinary artist from Abitibi-Témiscamingue who now lives and works in Gatineau. He obtained his bachelor’s degree in arts and design from Université du Québec en Outaouais (UQO) in 2009. His work has been presented in a number of solo and group exhibitions in Quebec – at l’Écart (Rouyn-Noranda), AXENÉO7 (Gatineau), Lobe (Chicoutimi) and Caravansérail (Rimouski) – and in Ontario, Argentina and Cameroon. Gaudet-Dion has also taken part in numerous performance events, including VIVA! Art Action (Montreal, 2013) and several Fait Maison performance collective shows (Gatineau). In 2018, he presented his work at the Foire en Art Actuel de Québec and at the Galerie d’Art Contemporain de Yaoundé in Cameroon during the Rencontres en Arts Visuels de Yaoundé (RAVY) visual arts event.
Jean-Michel Quirion holds a master’s degree in museum studies from Université du Québec en Outaouais (UQO) and is an independent author and curator. He currently works as artistic coordinator at the AXENÉO7 artist-run centre in Gatineau. In Montreal, Quirion is also involved in the research and reflection group CIÉ/CO: Collections et impératif événementiel / The Convulsive collections. As an author, he regularly contributes to specialized journals such as esse art + opinions, ESPACE art actuel, Inter art actuel, and Ciel variable. His recent curatorial projects have been shown at Galerie UQO (Gatineau, 2018) and Galerie Laroche / Joncas (Montreal, 2019). In 2020, his projects will be showcased at Centre d’exposition L’Imagier as well as AXENÉO7 (Gatineau) and Carleton University Art Gallery (Ottawa).
*** L’Imagier would like to thank the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec and the City of Gatineau for their financial support.