Studio Art MFA candidate in Photography Mathieu Grenier is featured at Art Toronto international art fair this week. Founded in 2000, Art Toronto is Canada’s international contemporary and modern art fair, located at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre in the city’s downtown core. Providing unique access to the Canadian art market, the fair is one of the most important annual art events in Canada.
Mathieu Grenier will be showing photographs from the series Once again, before and after. This body of work is a series of medium format photographs of detailed shot of various artist’s artworks. For the fair, Grenier will be showing photographs taken from Sol Lewitt’s Wall Drawings. The black and white film grain and the textured details of the walls in the enlarged close up images makes the two surfaces sometimes blend together or reflect each other. "It isn’t a work about documenting or referring another artist’s work of art," writes Grenier. "But maybe more about searching and seeing new forms and meanings within one’s work."
Lewitt’s Wall Drawings were carefully thought and planned works to be executed by gallery technicians-and often other artists-with some level of interpretation. From there, as a visitor/artist, the artist photograph parts the works in a manner to absorb and/or to reflect a space where another part of the creative process takes place and continue or leave its original idea and aesthetic. The photographs become a window to a parallel space of affect and meaning.
Mathieu Grenier (born in 1985) lives and works in Montréal (Canada) and Austin (USA) where he currently is an MFA candidate in studio art in photography. Through a practice that involves installation and photography, generally produced in situ, his work has been exploring the history of exhibitions and/or specific artworks with re-enactment strategies and observing the exhibition space as a photographic component. These are the core themes embedded in Grenier’s practice. His artworks, developed with great attention to detail, suggest a “shift from the devices behind the artwork to the work itself as device.” In the last 6 years, Grenier has presented numerous solo and group exhibitions in France and Canada. In 2014 he has been awarded the Charles Pachter’s prize for Canadian emerging artist from the Hnatyshyn Foundation. Grenier’s work is supported by the Quebec’s Council for the Arts and Letters and is represented by René Blouin Gallery. His work is featured in public and private collections. Is upcoming solo show will be presented in the fall 2019 at René Blouin Gallery in Montreal.