Room 2

Sylvain Bouthillette

BLASTRONAUTE

EXHIBITION /
OCTOBER 14 TO NOVEMBER 20, 2004

It is very rare in the context of contemporary visual arts, that an artist uses the words "spirituality" and "sacred" in relation to his work. They are not concepts often advanced in this era of speed and productivity. However, these are the words which Montreal artist, Sylvain Bouthillette refers to when explaining his creative process. While at the same time, naming his exhibition, Blastronaute, it is a title suggestive of a completely different image. This antinomy is not a matter of coincidence. In his work, Bouthillette expresses a desire to reverse the tendency of many contemporary artists to demonstrate the alienating aspects of existence and of life in society. His quest instead is to upset the widespread conviction that the individual is nothing more than a victim of the horrors of life, of his or her desires and cravings and their increasingly grander and more numerous needs.

In comic strokes and carnivalesque accents, touching even the burlesque, the world of this mutidisciplinary artist – drawing, printmaking, painting, sculpture, photography and sound art – raises a fundamental question : is it possible to eliminate the conflictual relationship between an interior and an exterior life in order for these spaces of existence to work together towards a conscious liberation of the powerful light inside oneself?

An adherent of the principles of buddhism - an art which he has practised for several years – Bouthillette cultivates this spirit of agreement between interior and exterior states through a constant attention and a rebellious resistance to the pressures of contemporary life, its accelerations and excesses as seen in our outrageous needs to consume and to be entertained. For Bouthillette art becomes a metaphor for the pathetic fight we lead against the real.

NdeB.
Translated from french by Karen Trask.

Sylvain Bouthillette lives and works in Montréal. He received a MFA from Concordia University, Montréal in 1990 and has since then presented his work in numerous solo exhibitions (Plein Sud, Longueuil, LÕÏil de poisson, Quebec, Art Mûr, Montreal) and group exhibitions in Québec, Ontario and in Switzerland. Parallel to his visual production, Sylvain Bouthillette also has a career as a musician, participating in numerous ways in the music scene.

The artist thanks the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec.