This exhibition comprises over twenty paintings produced by Montréal artist Etienne Zack over the last six years, and includes two major new works created specifically for the show.

Zack’s self-reflective approach frequently focuses on the context in which artworks are produced and exhibited, and the physical and conceptual tools that go into creating them. This preoccupation of his may be observed in the iconography of his paintings (which regularly feature the studio, art gallery and painter’s materials, or various historical and theoretical reference works, side by side with fictional technical manuals), though it is conveyed even more plainly in the assembly logic that governs the way they take shape. In this way, his work defuses the emotionalism generally associated with the artistic process, and instead brings out the constructed or playful character that determines it.

Biography

Born in Montréal in 1976, Etienne Zack briefly attended Concordia University before moving on to Vancouver, where he studied at the Emily Carr Institute of Art Design. He won the 2005 RBC Canadian Painting Competition and was awarded the Prix Pierre-Ayot in 2008. That same year, his work was presented at the Musée as part of Nothing Is Lost, Nothing Is Created, Everything Is Transformed: The Québec Triennial 2008. Previously, in 2004, he was selected by Neo Rauch and Gerd Harry Lybke to take part in the exhibition East International at the Norwich Gallery (Norwich, England). Zack also participated in the shows Paint (Vancouver Art Gallery, 2006–2007) and According to This (Bergen Kunsthall, Bergen, Norway, 2006). He currently lives and works in Montréal.

Commissarié par: François LeTourneux