DANS LA GADOUE JUSQU'AUX ESSIEUX

—OPENING FRIDAY APRIL 11, 2008 AT 7 PM

Galerie B-312 is pleased to welcome to its main space Dans la gadoue jusqu'aux essieux, two paintings by François Simard. Indeed, a series of references from one table to another are orchestrated in different registers, starting with their format and the structure that organizes their respective space of representation. The largest is 7 feet high by 30 feet wide with landscape pattern. The other measures 7 feet high by 9 feet wide and is structured by a triangular grid that invades the entire surface of the canvas. Each table thus gives consistency to very distinct and even opposing effects of depth. The dialogue between the two pieces is well and truly underway. Indeed, in the large painting, we recognize the shape of a landscape without the representation of it. Similarly, in the small work, we recognize some of the processes relating to modernist issues, but without a direct reference.-By introducing this seemingly pure visual dialogue between two paintings, François Simard highlights forms, like that of "landscape" or that of the ‘’picture plane’’.  François Simard relegates these matrix forms that act in spite of us, on the interpretation of what we see,  to the register of any other pictorial motif entering the composition of the painting. In so doing, he neutralizes their power of inflection of judgment. If François Simard deprives us thus of these interpretative shortcuts, it is necessary to note that in fact, he releases us from it.

Summary of text by—JEAN-ÉMILE VERDIER