In her latest exhibition at Galerie Simon Blais, Carol Bernier will be presenting a series of tiny landscapes. The 120 small paintings comprising her installation call to mind the varied topography of Iceland, where she will take up a residency this summer.

It was a chance encounter that set Bernier on her way to Iceland. Collectors who had visited the island thought they recognized its fjords, mountains, and lava fields in her paintings. It was then the artist realized that her abstract work of the past years had transmuted into representation. As a result, since 2009 she has consciously chosen to explore the theme of landscape. In the paintings in the exhibition Horizon(s), Bernier endlessly repeats—much like a mantra—a composition divided by a horizontal line, itself enough to evoke landscape. She plays with the boundaries of representation and abstraction in these landscapes, ones she pictures finding in Iceland during her coming stay.