Annie Conceicao Rivet
Martin Cuillerier
Ziad Naccache

EN SUSPENS
03.10–04.23.2005
Room 1

So numerous are those to have proclaimed the death of painting over the last decades that there has always been others who, in opposition, have dedicated themselves to demonstrating the contrary. The exhibition Contingences, which brings together the work of three young artists fresh from UQAM’s Bachelor’s program in visual and media arts, positions itself in this tradition.

Seeking to translate the multiple and interconnected relations that constitute the framework of existence in the contemporary world, Ziad Naccache, Annie Conceicao Rivet and Martin Cuillerier put forward – through distinct visual vocabularies – a common discourse on the idea of pictorial space. Through a cumulative process – not unrelated to the art of collage – Naccache revisits diverse historical currents and pictorial approaches that he connects to representational modes specific to technological culture. His paintings deploy an audacious mix of colours and dynamic shapes to form complex and irrational networks. Cuillerier’s abstract pictures are characterized, in contrast, by their great asceticism and their restrained expressivity. For her part, Conceicao Rivet devises architectural spaces offering a multitude of points of view and perspectives. Interested in the relationship between viewer and picture, she creates large works with irregular contours and modules independent of any wall support.

These artists’ paintings constitute “image stops” where space, traversed by antagonistic forces, explodes into fragments, constructs and deconstructs itself in a discontinuous movement of connections and uncouplings. In bringing attention to the perception of space as multiple possibilities, Contingences dismisses an eternally unrealized idea of unity.

NdeB.

Annie Conceicao Rivet, Martin Cuillerier and Ziad Naccache have so far mainly presented their group work in academic contexts or alternative events. En Suspens is their first exhibition in an artist centre. To carry out this project in a trio, they benefited from assistance from the youth volunteers program from the Quebec Government.