PROVENANCE

• FROM THE PRIVATE COLLECTION OF LYDIA MONARO – Galerie Lydia Monaro (Art Monaro)
• ACQUIRED DIRECTLY FROM THE ARTIST
• BY DESCENT TO THE PRESENT OWNER

For two decades, Canadian artist Pauline Gagnon’s work was characterized by abstraction. For the past fifteen years or so, her practice has focused primarily on portraits. These are accompanied by symbols, calligraphy, stenciled words, or even short stories, hidden beneath the pigments like secrets waiting to be deciphered. Her most recent works are a well-balanced blend of paintings and collages.

“A Portrait Matter”:

After more than twenty years of abstract painting, it was during a stay in Brazil that I discovered the face of the other as a source of pictorial inspiration. With this new inspiration, my artistic quest has become a matter of literary and pictorial portraiture. My relationship with the other is now a “portrait matter.” The intrusion of the other into a creative process that, until then, I had considered self-sufficient has at times provoked a feeling of dependence, even dread, accompanied by irrepressible enthusiasm soon followed by the inevitable questions raised by these new subjects. I chose not to be a subject myself and decided to be a device that records images, transforms them, and prints them onto a medium using pigments. The point of this is that the entire process would be filtered through my own software of censorship, desire, and quest—derived from my personal experiences and, unfortunately or fortunately, shaped by the unique yet limited nature of those experiences. Paradoxically, my immersion in the technical aspects of the process allowed me to understand a hidden motivation behind my desire to bring things into view. The desire to represent the other stems from the need to transcend the feeling that grips us when the other is absent. The fact of no longer seeing what was nevertheless there before, the fact that the other may step out—even for just a moment—from our field of vision, and there we are, face to face with our own death. The possibility offered by a simple stroke to make reappear what was no longer there—what had left us or what we had left behind—may have motivated the earliest cave drawings. In short, this would be the manifestation of a desire for eternity. To depict the other is to make them immortal. Painting, in my view, has retained the three characteristics of death outlined above: presence, stillness, and silence. I believe that in our societies, the relevance of painting—like that of death—will always be called into question together. And it has become, so to speak, a matter of portraiture.

Non-figurative Expression:

Pauline Gagnon’s painting is undoubtedly non-figurative. However, arbitrary classifications sometimes require further nuance to fully grasp all the subtleties of an expression. Such caution is particularly applicable to Pauline Gagnon’s work. Her approach, closely tied to space, signs, and symbols, engages with reality in a more concrete way than it may appear at first glance. Space, as explored by the artist, resembles scenography through the masses and structures that compose it. Theatrical, even lyrical, the spaces created by Gagnon bear witness to her connection with the world. Through her extensive travels across nearly every continent, she has left an indelible mark on her artistic journey and her understanding of the universe. Pauline Gagnon’s works are driven by her intuitive strength and her tendency to become one with her surroundings. The omnipresence of graphic signs and symbols punctuates her artistic language, which, while not providing a precise direction, suggests valuable avenues for interpretation. In 2005, Pauline Gagnon took a new turn in her artistic expression, returning to a more figurative style, highlighted in her exhibition “Geisha Personal Data” (Galerie Monaro, Montreal, Quebec, 2006).

Galerie Jamault has represented Pauline Gagnon in France since September 2006.