A renowned sculptor and ceramist, Yves Louis-Seize opened a gallery eight years ago in Saint-Gabriel, and this place of discovery continues to shine in Lanaudière. Each summer, it presents five exhibitions of three weeks each to promote artists from the area, but also from elsewhere.
This summer, the program begins with a collective exhibition, Blanc/Nuage Blanc/Oubli, which offers 13 views expressed through glass, photography, painting, ceramics, installation and sculpture. The artists are Laurent Craste, Yannick De Serre, Montserrat Duran Muntadas, Yves Louis-Seize, Véronique Malo, Francis Montillaud, Chantal Paradis, Dominique Pottier, Michel Robidas, Marie-Claude Robillard, Dominique Sirois, Ariane Thézé and Jean-Simon Trottier.
Scenographer and designer Michel Robidas takes advantage of his professional retirement to create paintings and costumes that he has exhibited at Yves Louis-Seize since 2015. For this exhibition, he created a sculpture with fabrics and branches. An impressive work between wall hanging and large coat. Dedicated to the operatic aria The Cold Song from Henry Purcell’s opera King Arthur. He printed the lyrics in French and English. Stanzas on the power of love to thaw hearts! An epic opera beautifully embodied by this icy work by the brilliant costume designer. All that’s missing is the soundtrack!
Montrealer Francis Montillaud exhibits one of his three works in the former safe of this building which, before being a gallery, was a financial institution. His large sculpture Paréidolie bears the name of this faculty we have to discern forms in landscapes, like a face in the heart of a cloud. He made it in the studio in stainless steel and plaster, using classic techniques and digital technology. A beautiful work of solids and voids that can be appreciated both from the front and from the side.
Yves Louis-Seize also exhibits a work, Le regard absorbed à Aurélien, a tribute to his deceased father, “a man of few words”. A look also at the Laurentian nature and this sky with white clouds.
Long a painter and decorator, notably on film sets, Dominique Pottier, passionate about Quebec nature, exhibits four landscape studies, watercolors, varnishes and dry pastels that evoke the morphology of the surface of a frozen lake. A mixture of transparency, shine and matte reflections. Delicate work.
Before installing four major works in Paris, from June 7 to 11, at the Révélations biennial, an event of crafts and creations where Quebec is the guest nation this year (and where the International Film Festival on the (FIFA) will notably screen Bruno Boulianne’s film on the painter and ceramist Jean-Pierre Larocque), and before going to exhibit 12 other works all summer long at the Maison de la culture in Longueuil, Laurent Craste is present in Saint -Gabriel three of his white ceramics.
The Venus of Lolo recalls the whiteness of the marbles of Antiquity. “It evokes the Venus de Milo because it results from a workshop accident,” says the artist from Saint-Damien with humor. During the finishing, I had broken one of the handles. I ripped the other off in anger and it reminded me of the Venus de Milo! »
Another, Adolf Loos’Wet Dream VI, is part of his Abuse series, his ceramics which he takes pleasure in torturing! It looks like a large ornamented terrine, of the monarchical type, smashed by a poker. A mixture of delicacy and revolutionary violence!
If you go to the art gallery around 3 p.m. on a sunny day, you will be treated to the magnificent reflections of sunlight in the blown glasses of Jean-Simon Trottier, displayed in the window of the gallery. Note that from June 3 to 24, the gallery will host the works of Quebec artist Odette Théberge.
