Artist Statement
Jean-Benoit Pouliot’s work is structured around issues linked to composition and the reading and mediatisation of the image in painting. Through an exploration of the modalities of the artwork’s reception in the digital era, the artist takes an interest in the painted surface. Jean-Benoit Pouliot’s work reveals the manner in which the omnipresence of screens now conditions our very experience of artworks. Characteristically abstract, his works come across as superimpositions of planes and networks in which the thin layers of accumulated material suggest a depth and generate immaterial spaces that appear to stretch beyond the painting’s physical limits – which are altered and transgressed.
Biography
Self-taught, Jean-Benoit Pouliot (born in 1975) began his artistic career at the beginning of the 2000s by way of engraving. From 2004 to 2008, he worked as part of the duo L’œil de verre, which used light as a raw material, and he collaborated with various figures of the current music scene. Painting began to take on a prominent place in his practice as of 2008, and since then, Pouliot has participated in several group exhibitions in Quebec and New York. His work has also been presented during solo exhibitions, notably at Galerie Hugues Charbonneau (2017, 2014 and 2012), at Galerie d’art d’Outremont (2011) and at the Cirque du Soleil headquarters (2006). Among his group exhibitions, we count “Hors cadre” at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (2021) and “Grâce au dessin”, presented at Nan Rae Gallery (Woodbury University, Burbank, California). Pouliot also took part in the public art event Aires libres in Montreal (2014), the Peinture Extrême event in Montreal (2013 and 2010), as well as the Mois Multi 10: festival international d’arts multidisciplinaires et numériques in Quebec City (2009). His works are part of many private and institutional collections: Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec, Loto-Québec, Banque Nationale, Banque de Montréal, Banque TD, Mouvement Desjardins, BLG and Collection du Cirque du Soleil, among others. Jean-Benoit Pouliot lives and works in Montreal.
