Vingt jeunes artistes

To mark the 10th anniversary of the Master’s program in fine arts at the University of Quebec in Montreal, the Galerie de l’UQAM will present the works of twenty artists who have been selected among the graduates of the years. 1977 to 1987.

Philippe Boissonnet, Laurent Bouchard, Claude-Marie Caron, Jean-Yves Côté, Denyse Dumas, Pierre Fournier, Michel Gaboury, Jean-Pierre Gilbert, Sylvie Guimont, Michel Lagacé, Lise Landry, Raymond Lavoie, Lisette Lemieux, Michèle Lorrain, Laurent Pilon, Bernard Rousseau, Paul Smith, Hannelore Suerich-Storm, Ariane Thézé and will exhibit their works of varied techniques and content. This diversity is characteristic of the different approaches and aesthetic choices they made during their studies.

Among these artists with burgeoning careers, several have already made their mark on the Montreal or international art scene, through individual exhibitions in commercial or parallel galleries. They were chosen by a selection committee made up of professors as well as Micheline Couture, Suzanne Lemerise, Giuseppe Fiore and Jacques Albert Wallot, former directors of the Master’s degree, who took into consideration continuity in practice and the quality of production.

This production takes the form of conceptual art, and is presented through various mediums such as painting, sculpture, photography, two-dimensional objects, performance, while integrating, in some cases, mixed techniques. It sets itself apart from the dominant propositions of the past twenty years.

All these young artists passionately follow the evolution of contemporary art. Some defend their aesthetic choices with theoretical discourses directly or indirectly supporting their work, while others pursue, outside of a predetermined discourse, an intuition or an idea that they discover and recognize both in the accomplishment of the work and in the following reflections.

The quality of the works presented in this exhibition marks a significant change in the aesthetic choices made by young artists in Quebec since the Rioux Report in 1986 on art education in Quebec, which recommended the continuation of art studies at advanced university levels. The exhibition put on by the UQAM Masters in Fine Arts Committee makes it possible, for the first time, to partially verify the proposals of Mr. Rioux and his collaborators.

The UQAM Master’s program is open to students from all universities in Quebec and its clientele includes students from France, Belgium, Switzerland, Korea, as well as the United States and other Canadian provinces. The exchanges resulting from these contributions of students from different cultural sources stimulate creative minds all around.