Plaisir fétichiste d’une militante antifasciste
(série Amour et anarchie)
2017
Acrylique sur toile
Acrylic on canvas
150 x 124 cm (59” x 49”)
Opening reception Saturday November 11, 3 PM to 5 PM. Artist in attendance.
Love and Anarchy
Cynthia Girard-Renard invites you to her latest project titled Love and Anarchy, inspired by the film of director Lina Wertmüller within which the action takes place inside a brothel under the ruling of Mussolini’s fascist Italy. The artist has elaborated 6 erotico-political paintings where inter-species characters mingle in a carnival of pleasure even if the days are dark and the speculative scenarios apocalyptical.
Inspired by a constellation of women artists and works such as the erotic paintings of Dorothy Iannone, the body art of Carolee Schneemann and the ecosexual movement of Annie Sprinkle, Girard-Renard has produced a body of work in which polymorphous figures, intertwined between plant, human and animal, are copulating and are in exaltation, defying passivity and the status quo. Figures constructed from her own body prints cavort within a ground printed directly from tree trunks. These bark backgrounds are the perfect burlesque theater to animate this vigorous troupe of characters who defy obscurantist scenarios with satirical playlets.
About Cynthia Girard-Renard
Cynthia Girard-Renard received her MFA from Goldsmiths College, London, UK (1998). In the fall 2017, she takes part in the Canadian Biennial presented at the National Gallery of Canada and she presents her solo exhibition Our Mad Masters at the Musée d’art de Joliette. For more than 20 years, she has been actively exhibiting in Canada and internationally, including: Uma Certa Falta de Coerencia, Porto, Portugal (2015); Esker Foundation, Calgary, Alberta (2014); Thousand Plateaus Art Space, Chengdu, China (2011); Dunlop Art Gallery, Regina (2010); Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, Québec (2010); September Gallery, Berlin (2009); Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin (2009); SPACE, London (2006); Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal (2005); etc.
The artist has been the recipient of grants from the Canada Council for the Arts and the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec to partake in residencies in London, Paris, New York and Berlin. Girard-Renard’s work is found in the collections of the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, the Canadian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Carleton University Art Gallery, the UQAM Gallery, the TD Bank as well as many private collections. Cynthia Girard-Renard lives and works in Montréal.
