Atemporalités

OPENING

Arsenal Contemporary Art is proud to present, for its winter programming, the exhibition ‘‘Marc Séguin: atemporalités’’, a portrait of the Canadian artist Marc Séguin and his multidisciplinary practice. As part of the release of his feature film Stealing Alice, Arsenal Contemporary wants to honour the composite and abundant corpus of Séguin. Taking from different series of paintings and drawings, this is the first exhibition that encompasses all the spheres of creation of the artist: visual arts, literature, and cinema. 

For more than 15 years, Marc Séguin has imposed himself as one of the key figures in the national artistic landscape, and due to his increased presence outside the province, he has become one of the most distinguished artists on the international scene. The artist shares his creation process between Montreal and Brooklyn, drawing inspiration from both the city and the hinterland. 

Marc Séguin’s notoriety is not only due to his recognized talent by the visual arts community, but also to this recognition from the literary world following the publication of his three novels since 2009 (Poacher’s Faith, Hollywood, and Nord Alice). By attracting the attention of the critics and the public, Séguin asserted himself as a rigorous and sensitive artist. In 2016, Séguin added a string to his bow by producing his first long filmmaking, Stealing Alice, for which some sections were filmed at Arsenal Contemporary Art Montreal. 

Marc Séguin is positioned both as an observer and as an active actor within the contemporary society, a society he takes pleasure to describe and criticize. The narrative course of the exhibition revolves around the themes evoked in each of his novels, particularly this refusal to restrict oneself according to temporal, territorial and disciplinary boundaries. His three literary works are also the preamble to a new dialogue between images and words of the artist; after all, Séguin draws inspiration from his works in his own perception of the contemporary world. 

The exhibition begins with his first work, Poacher’s Faith; this section evokes the arrhythmia of the forest, the encompassing nature that still resists the hand of man. Hollywood is inserted in the centre of the wandering, emphasizing the temporal, personal and amorous ellipses within an infinite triangle, observable from above. Finally, the Nord Alice space is the highlight of the course, enhancing in a grand and unusual way the immensity of the violent and eternal territory. At the end of this journey, Arsenal Contemporary Art wants to emphasize the timeless work of the artist and also encourage the spectator to be carried away by the opening of the spiritual and narrative boundaries expressed in words and images of Séguin.

In addition to the exhibition, Arsenal Contemporary will present Marc Séguin’s feature film, Stealing Alice, twice on December 26 and 27, 2016. These projections are made possible with the collaboration of Atelier Brooklyn.