Galerie B-312 is pleased to present Tropical Cruise, Noémie Weinstein's latest exhibition, which immerses us in the phantasm of maritime tourism.—The cruise ship fascinates. Its specificity of being a closed territory, but having the capacity to move towards the most exotic lands, makes it a rich heterotopy of imaginary projections.—After the commercialization of air transportation in the 50s, the ship reinvented itself as a source of entertainments and discoveries by increasing stops in exotic destinations. Today, short-lived cruises are flourishing and stopovers, the initial attractions of the cruises, are no longer so important. The ship, a floating luxury hotel, increasingly borrows from the theme park and offers a wide variety of sports and leisure activities that become a destination in itself. The cruise carries with it its lot of paradoxes. The traveler, fond of exclusivities and discoveries, seems to prefer the inauthentic decor of the boat to reality.—Noémie Weinstein is well aware of this, and it is on this tipping point that she developed the paintings constituting Tropical Cruise. The places she paints are a call to this imaginative exoticism. Empty from all human traces and deserted, they support the factitious nature of the tourism industry. In his paintings of medium and large size, the artist chose to join small drawings whose format is reminiscent of the postcard. The acid and fluorescent tints of the pools are reminiscent of the idealized turquoise of seaside travel photos, this dream built and sold. In this, Noémie Weinstein's painting is more broadly a critique of the loss of authenticity of the lived experience.

—ISABELLE GUIMOND