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Jean-Benoit Pouliot — Tilt and Shift: Flexible Images

March 15 to April 22, 2017

Jean-Benoit Pouliot — Tilt and Shift: Flexible Images

Jean-Benoit Pouliot
Lunettes superposantes, 2016
Lunettes modifiées et miroirs
Modified glasses and mirror

Galerie Hugues Charbonneau is delighted to present a new exhibition by Jean-Benoit Pouliot in which he adopts a conceptual and reflexive approach to the painting object. The different states of this exploration variously take shape in photography, painting and in installation or sculpture.

Tilt and Shift: Flexible Images is a project that investigates the image/object relationship through an active reflection on the contemporary conditions of the image’s appearance, transformation and distribution. Jean-Benoit Pouliot takes his own production of abstract paintings as a staring point to release the images that are inherent in them; these images will consequently be free, flexible and will continue to follow their course independently of their primary support. Does the image keep on moving beyond the point where the painting ends? If yes, in what shapes? In what spaces?

Jean-Benoit Pouliot
Glissement découpé 1, 2015
Impression jet d’encre sur papier glacé opaque, monté sous plexi sans reflet, sur sintra
Ink jet print on glossy opaque paper, mounted under plexi without reflexion, on sintra
36 x 32 cm (14’’ x 12 1/2’’)

Nowadays the image can be easily detached from its primary physical reality: it can move, appear and disappear on command depending on the digital vessel that is conveying it. Jean-Benoit Pouliot has sought to contain this new image ubiquity by personally directing several second lives of his paintings along hypothetical paths.The interventions he carries out deeply probe the physical relation that the painting intrinsically sets up between the image and the object. In the gallery space this process triggers a play of echoes between the canvasses and their photographic, textual and sculptural iterations. The paintings were digitized, stretched, cut up, photocopied, put under the microscope or described in words. This approach on several fronts enables the artist to foreground the limits and impacts of digital media in our relationship to the image. Jean-Benoit Pouliot stages his paintings and by the same token, he reframes the way in which we behold them. In reflecting the image by way of the painting, he proposes to take the time to “re-view” the painting by way of the image.

Jean-Benoit Pouliot
Sans-titre, 2017
Acrylique sur toile
Acrylic on canvas
35,5 x 27,9 cm (14” x 11”)

Jean-Benoit Pouliot

Jean-Benoit Pouliot (b. 1975) is a self-taught artist who began his career in the early 2000s through the medium of printmaking. Painting gained a central place in his practice in 2008, and since then, Pouliot has participated in several solo and group exhibitions in Canada and the United-States. He has also participated in Nuit Blanche Toronto (2016), the public art happening Aires libres in Montréal (2014), the Extreme Painting event in Montréal (2013 and 2010), as well as the Multi Month 10 in Québec City (2009). His works are in numerous private and institutional collections, such as the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec, Loto-Québec, National Bank, Bank of Montreal, TD Bank, Mouvement Desjardins, and the collection of the Cirque du Soleil, among others.

Jean-Benoit Pouliot, L’image souple : Inclinaisons et déclinaisons [exposition_exhibition], 2017, Galerie Hugues Charbonneau, Montréal, Canada.
Jean-Benoit Pouliot, L’image souple : Inclinaisons et déclinaisons [exposition_exhibition], 2017, Galerie Hugues Charbonneau, Montréal, Canada.
Jean-Benoit Pouliot, L’image souple : Inclinaisons et déclinaisons [exposition_exhibition], 2017, Galerie Hugues Charbonneau, Montréal, Canada.
Jean-Benoit Pouliot, L’image souple : Inclinaisons et déclinaisons [exposition_exhibition], 2017, Galerie Hugues Charbonneau, Montréal, Canada.