Marie-Claire Blais

For her first solo exhibition in a Quebec museum, Marie-Claire Blais is unveiling an entirely new body of work, composed of a monumental installation, several paintings and a sound work. In this contemplative environment, pictorial atmospheres of rose, blue and orange tints remind us of the affect and meditative rhythms of sunrise and sunset.

Streaming Light, the suspended installation that gives the exhibition its name, was specially conceived with the Museum’s gallery space in mind. It is Blais’s most ambitious work to date and the culmination of her recent explorations in painting. Comprised of multiple panels of painted burlap, it evokes the movement of an imposing wave swelling up to meet the bodies of visitors.

On the walls surrounding the installation, a series of creased paintings are arranged in an irregular succession that lends a certain cadence to the whole. The folds create a play of shadow and light that both heightens the materiality of the painted surfaces and alters the visitors’ perceptions of chromatic nuances as they move through the gallery.

In addition, a sound work sporadically fills the gallery, like a breath animating the space. This work transmits the sounds Blais produced in her studio while applying the pigments to the unprimed burlap using a brush and broad circular motions. This creation brings to awareness the physical dimension of the process of making the installation’s panels, which, paradoxically, are airy and delicate in their completed state.