Passages is about time that transforms, about what ends and what begins. The cycle of the seasons becomes a metaphor for the passages that run through life: changes, losses, rebirths and the traces that time leaves within us. Rather than depicting the seasons literally, I seek to translate their sensations and inner movements. Colour, matter and painterly gesture become the means of evoking the ephemeral, memory and transformation.
These works bear witness to a period when my painting was gradually moving away from representation to become a more intuitive and introspective space. They already reveal an interest in fragmentation, traces and the transformation of matter, concerns that would go on to take new forms in my mosaic, installation and conceptual work.
Passages thus marks a stage in a journey in which the work gradually becomes a place of reflection on what passes through us, transforms us and remains within us.
The exhibition Passages was presented at the Musée Beaulne in Coaticook, Quebec, and at Galerie Luz, Belgo Building, Montreal, Quebec.
Building on Passages, these mosaics explore time, the cycles of nature and states of transformation. The material, fragmented and then reassembled, becomes a language for evoking movement, the ephemeral and the traces left by experience. Over the course of this research, nature gradually becomes the starting point for a more sensitive and inward exploration of matter, where fragments, textures and assemblages give form to impressions that go beyond representation.
Photos: Robert Gosselin