Recent works by painter Jean-Sébastien Denis. A catalog will accompany the exhibition.
In the words of art historian Anne-Marie Dubois:
"Denis’ new paintings, from the exhibition Chromatic Constructions and Aberrations, are like fertile terrain with sedimented layers of flat colour, overflowing pigments, and cut and glued fragments of older canvases. Each painting tells the material story of a painting in the making.
First, Denis sets the canvas aside for a few hours, even a few days—so that the paint can fully saturate the cotton fibres—until the surface becomes like skin, like real pictorial flesh from which the pigment virtually oozes. Then, vigorous brush strokes leave moving swaths of colour in their wake, foiling the usual obvious- ness of the repoussoir element, and thus interfering with what—background or form—has precedence over the other. And finally, monochromatic steppes saturated with thick paint pull our gaze deeply into the work, captivating us with their materiality."
A catalog showing the new paintings of the artist as well as previous work is now available. Buy it online.
Biography of the artist
Born in Sherbrooke in 1970, Jean-Sébastien Denis obtained a bachelor's degree in visual arts from UQAM in 1996. He lives and works in Montréal, where he has been represented by Galerie Simon Blais since 2002.
During his studies, he participated in the Symposium of Young Painters in Canada (Baie-Saint-Paul, 1993). Since then, he has participated in several group exhibitions, including Artifice'98 (Saidye Bronfman Centre for the Arts, Montreal, 1998), Génération Montréal : Ville peinture (Montreal, 2002) and Repérage (Musée des beaux-arts de Sherbrooke, 2011). Her work has also been featured in solo exhibitions including Forest (Maison de la culture du Plateau Mont-Royal, Montreal, 2004), Recent Drawings (Société des arts sur papier, Montreal, 2005), Recent Paintings (Charest-Weinberg Gallery, Key West, Florida, 2006), Deviations and Diaphony (Galerie Simon Blais, Montreal, 2009), Machination (Galerie Simon Blais, Montreal, 2011), Intrications (Galerie Simon Blais, 2015), Extensions, shifts and ambiguous statements on plasticity (Galerie Simon Blais, 2017). In 2010, he curated the exhibition Dessins, presented at the Maison de la culture Frontenac.
Within the framework of the program of integration of arts in architecture, he produces public artworks. These important achievements are Ascension (2012) for the UQO in Saint-Jérôme, Prisme in 2014 for the MUHC and more recently 6 works in Quebec schools. From 2021 to 2024, he will realize all the works on the bus stations (aediculae) of the SRB-Pie IX project of the ARTM in Montreal and Laval (14 km).
He has received grants from the Canada Council for the Arts and the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec. His works are part of various private, institutional and corporate collections (Collection Prêt d'œuvres d'art du Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, Loto-Québec, Hydro-Québec, National Bank, Groupe Transcontinental, collective of collectors La peau de l'ours).
