for immediate
release
Marc Séguin
Failures
March 24 - April 30,
2011
Reception Thursday March 24, 6 - 8
pm
Mike Weiss Gallery is pleased to present
Failures, our first solo exhibition by Canadian artist Marc Séguin. War
images, churches in ruin, iconic portraits of an assassin, a billionaire and a
pope make up more than a dozen new paintings with ash, charcoal and oil on raw
canvas. Using found images culled from the internet, history and text
books, Séguin portrays moments in social, political, historical and personal
timelines that are marked by the absence of success. From crumbling social
institutions to a disintegrating religious authority and a vanished spiritual
transcendence in art, Séguins work demands that viewers confront humanitys
failure to
progress.
Marc Séguin / Circle of Animals / 2011
/ Oil, charcoal and ash on canvas / 60 x 84
inches
Séguin creates near-photographic quality grisailles
only to deface the surface with clusters of expressive, ecstatic strokes of bold
color or piles of deep black. These gestures are a nod to the spiritual
power of Abstract Expressionism as well as an act of defiance to the authority
of The Academy. By using ash as a medium the last remnant of burnt
matter which constitutes the corporeal and that which could not be further
destroyed Séguin resuscitates the discarded vestiges by assigning it an
alternate function. The paintings are turned into an organic eulogy to that
which no longer
exists.
Marc Séguin / Prayers / 2011/ Oil,
charcoal and ash on canvas / 48 x 36 inches
Marc Séguin / Lee Harvey Oswald 3
/ 2011 / Oil, charcoal and ash on canvas / 24 x 20
inches
By alluding to historical events - the German
massacre of a French town, the Holocaust, an assassination attempt - and failed
ideologies such as the institution of marriage and the Churchs ability to
protect, the paintings become commemorations of non-successes, the debris of
crumbling near-achievements and forgotten debacles. Energy, viewers are
reminded, cannot be destroyed, but only sublimated. The in-between process on
the way to our goals is where life happens. Séguins paintings, with their
whispered irony of failures, become a reminder of
life.
Marc Séguin / Studio
view / Brooklyn, NY /
2011
Marc Séguin (b. 1970, Ottawa, Ontario) currently
lives and works in Montreal, Québec and Brooklyn, NY. Séguin has exhibited
extensively in Canada and the United States and has work in numerous museums and
collections including Musée d'Art Contemporain de Montréal, Musée National des
Beaux-Arts du Québec, Musée des Beaux-arts de Montréal, François Pinault
Collection, Bibliothèque Nationale du Québec, and the Cirque du Soleil
Collection to list a few. When not painting in his Brooklyn studio, he
spends his time in Montréal where he is an avid writer, hunter and harvester of
maple
syrup.
Séguins work and life was the recent subject of a
feature-length documentary; Bulls eye, un peintre à laffût, (A
Painter on the Watch) by writer/director Bruno Boulianne and Séguins first
novel, La foi du braconnier (The Faith of a Poacher)
published by Leméac, is due to be released in English in April
2011.
For further information or images, please contact
Anna Ortt, Director at anna@mikeweissgallery.com
Mike Weiss
Gallery
520 West 24th Street, New York, NY
10011
Between 10th and 11th
Avenues
Nearest Subway: C/E 23rd Street & 8th
Avenue
Tel: 212- 691-6899 Fax: 212-691-6877
Gallery Hours: Tues-Sat 10 to
6
|