Mathieu Latulippe

Mathieu Latulippe’s artistic practice explores mythological, iconological, and symbolic sources that have played a key role in shaping our contemporary worldview and Western collective imagination. His recent research focuses particularly on how we inhabit the world and coexist; on architecture and urban life; and on our relationship with nature and the environment.

His work is driven by a constant desire to experiment with ways of combining and bringing together elements that are—formally, conceptually, stylistically, historically, or culturally—diverse or even disparate. By forging unexpected connections between these elements, he reveals the complexity of a single reality through multiple facets or layers of interpretation. The result is a conceptual or narrative network in which the various elements come together, clash, or engage with one another in surprising ways. He creates assemblages—or systems—that require the viewer to consider both the whole (the overarching idea) and the myriad relationships established between the various, more or less autonomous parts.

His practice is also characterized by a vision that can be somewhat dark, critical, or acerbic, yet never excludes humor, whimsy, or playfulness. Indeed, most of his works feature a constant, subtle oscillation between the credible and the ridiculous, the serious and the comic, and the solemn and the playful.

Mathieu Latulippe lives and works in Montreal and is represented by Galerie Division. His work has been exhibited in Canada and abroad, notably at the International Festival of Films on Art (Montreal), Manif d’Art 4 (Quebec City), Fonderie Darling, B312, Optica, and the 2011 Triennial at the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal. He has held artist residencies at—among other places—art3 in Valence and the CALQ studios in Basel and Seoul. His work is held in numerous private and public collections. He is the recipient of the 2015 Victor-Martyn-Lynch-Stanton Award for visual arts. He is currently presenting an installation at the Skol art centre and will be an artist-in-residence at the Seoul Art Museum’s Sema Nanji Residency.