Presented in coproduction with Le Mois de la Photo à Montréal, the exhibit Arrangements d’après nature heralds Alain Paiement’s return to the Montreal art millieu. Discover the artist’s latest artistic endeavors, as both galleries are packed with his creations.
Occupying the main exhibition hall, a photographic installation unravels a narrative framed around the residential space of a hunter and his spouse that is as racy as it is surprisingly insightful. In these pictures, the husband’s stuffed animals and other hunting trophies confront his wife’s wax dolls, silverware and curios in a stark dichotomic clash. This project follows previous research around spatial representations constructed from cartographical techniques. However, this newest work by Alain Paiement perverts his previous top-down view and documentary rigueur by restoring architectural volumes and deliberately using simplistic digital modifications. Optical distortions characterize the artist’s work, they present his unique view of the world.
A selection of photographic works produced between 1996 and 2008 is presented in the smaller gallery and help to put into perspective the artist’s transition from geographical perspectives to new procedures of fictions that characterize his newest productions.
Alain Paiement
Alain Paiement lives in Montréal. He is an artist and professor at Université du Québec à Montréal. His research has led him to work in several visual art forms, between painting, photography, sculpture and architectural installation, with methods inspired by the geographical sciences. His works have been regularly shown in several countries since the early 1980s. Among which, the exhibitions Amphithéâtres, at the Power Plant in Toronto in 1989, The Power of the City / the City of Power, at the Whitney Museum Downtown, New-York in 1992, Mappemondes, at the Musée d’art Moderne de Liège in 1999 and Surfacing, at Tinglado 2, Tarragona (Spain) in 2004. More recently, the exhibitions Alice in Wonderland at Turku in Finland and at Cadiz in Spain in 2011 and in2012, Lost in landscape at Musée d’art moderne et contemporain de Trento (Italy) in 2015 and There all is order and beauty at Argos,Centre for art and media, in Brussels, in 2019. He received the prix Louis-Comtois in 2002 and was a Scotia Bank Photography Award finalist in 2012. He has created several works in public buildings and spaces in Montréal, such as Tessellations sans fin at Centre de recherche du CHUM in 2013 and Bleu de bleu, an installation on highway 20 in 2017.