Jérôme Bouchard: "Weavings Behind the Slag Heap"

Exhibition presented as part of the satellite program of MOMENTA 2021

It is on the basis of his recent artist residencies (Japan, Belgium, France) and in dialogue with his recent work environment in Liège, which has been damaged by the floods of July 2021, that Jérôme Bouchard offers this exhibition on the subject of the anthropogenic nature of our landscapes.

Combining painting processes with those using numerically controlled machine tools, Bouchard opens "a negotiated human / machine space where a re-reading of our modes of representation relating to the environment is played out".

It is by altering the material with deposits of smoke, scrapings or perforations that the artist revisits the processes that have marked the practice of painting since the second half of the twentieth century. However, it is a completely different work that Bouchard proposes by diverting these codes into an approach deliberately integrating so-called more objective methods between science and art, reinterpreting the translation of geographical data relating to the borders of the Meuse in Belgium by means of a pictorial exercise. Brought back into the “field of painting”, the geographic data show “smoky territories” which no longer have any pretension of being objective visual information and where colour becomes a central element: “my exploration aims to discover what becomes of the multiple transformations and translations that I inflict on surfaces. Colour never comes from a direct application: I look for colours that emerge from the sides, from below or as I move in front of the painting in dialogue with  he context".

The artist would like to warmly thank the Canada Council for the Arts, Mr. Pierre Hallot, professor at the University of Liège, Mr. Bryan Stepien, director of the FabLab in Liège (Relab) and M. Richard Gagnier, Head of Conservation at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts.

 

See the exhibition on Vimeo