Galerie Simon Blais is proud to present the work of artist Frédérique Ulman-Gagné. The exhibition "Landscapes I Have Never Seen: Second Dialogue" consists of recent paintings on wood and canvas. This is her first exhibition at Galerie Simon Blais.
In the artist's words:
"The last decade of our Baba will have tragically taken place in a single room, that of a long-term care facility in Montréal where she has quietly sunk into dementia to leave us gradually, then permanently. In her small room, my family and I listened to excerpts of confused stories in which real memories were intermingled with fictitious elements, wether they be places and objects, languages and birds in flight. These sometimes playful, confused, tragic, sensitive, historical and poetic stories of our Baba are at the origin of my most recent research in painting. I now present a second part that I imagined as a dialogue with Baba and in which I am more specifically interested in the places that were mentioned in her stories."
Illustration: A beach in Split in 1968, 2022, oil on wood, 83.8 x 76.2 cm. Photo Guy L'Heureux.
Biography of the artist
Frédérique Ulman-Gagné was born in 1982 in Montreal where she lives and works. She graduated from Concordia University (2007) and holds a master's degree in visual and media arts from the Université du Québec à Montréal (2010) where she now teaches painting. Her work has been presented in several solo and group exhibitions in Montreal including Galerie Les Territoires (2012), La Centrale galerie Powerhouse (2013), Galerie Dominique Bouffard (2016), Galerie McClure (2017), McBride Contemporain (2020), Galerie Occurrence (2021) and in several Maisons de la culture. The artist has also presented her work in Trois-Rivières at Presse-Papier (2019), in France at the RDV Gallery in Nantes (2014), in Iceland at SIM Gallery (2013) and in Brooklyn at the NARS Foundation Gallery. She has completed several residencies in Reykjavik at Samband Islenska myndlistarmanna (2013), in St-Jean-Port-Joli at Centre Est-Nord-Est (2014), in Brooklyn at NARS Foundation (2018) and at the Vermont Studio Center (2019). Her projects have been supported by several grants from the Quebec and Canadian Arts Councils. Her paintings are part of several private collections.
