Montréal artist Jacques Clément returns to Winnipeg with his large-scale and miniature folded paper figurative drawings to create a site-specific installation for Gallery 1C03 at The University of Winnipeg. Working with acrylic and ink on long, narrow strips of brown Kraft paper, he often elaborates his images with collage, stencil and monotype techniques. Clément's art highlights the importance of process and explores a new approach to the traditional genre of life studies.
“I came into maturity amidst the contradictory influences of the classical art traditions, hard edge abstraction and the negation of the object in conceptual art,” says Clément. “Like so many contemporary artists, making my art is a struggle to appease these conflicting influences: the human figures; the multiple variations in a modular grid structures; and the conceptual process.”
Working intuitively and relishing the idea of contingency, Clément considers the practice of installation just as important as putting images on paper. For him, hanging the art is the second stage in the works’ development, as he responds to the unique architecture, light and space in each gallery where his art is shown to customize the display every time. The third and final phase for Clément’s creations is audience engagement: “Viewers are invited to enter into my personal language of forms, gestures, textures, colours, and the particular drama that I’ve drawn out of the space. Their responses to all this, in reverse, is their own process of communicating with the exhibition.”
Jacques Clément is a francophone artist and art educator based in Montréal. He obtained a Bachelor of Visual Arts from the Université du Québec à Montréal in 1982 and has exhibited his work in solo and group exhibitions across Canada for more than 20 years. Recent solo exhibitions include mixed media drawing installations at Artcite Inc. in Windsor, Ontario (2007) and at the University of Toronto’s Justina M. Barnicke Gallery (2006). Earlier this year, he was awarded the Prix d’excellence at the Salon International du Pastel in Yvetot, France. Clément has taught painting and mixed media at the Saidye Bronfman Centre for the Arts since 1999. He has also lectured at universities, art galleries and cultural centers across the country. During his stay in Winnipeg, he will deliver a lecture and workshop at the Collège universitaire de Saint-Boniface
 Jacques Clément, Manel, 2006, mixed media on paper, 183 x 700 x 10 cm. |
Visit Jacques Clement's Website to view more of his work.
For further information, contact University art curator Jennifer Gibson at (204) 786-9253 or j.gibson@uwinnipeg.ca.