November 9, 2008

Jean-Marc Desgent

Good news for everybody who appreciated the text published in my catalogue Sanctuaires. The author, Jean-Marc Desgent, is releasing his first book translated in english at Guernica Editions, entitled Twentieth Centuries. The original french version of this book, Vintièmes siècles, won an impressive amount of poetry prizes in Québec and Canada when it was released in 2005. Among these literary achievements, the most important one is the Canadian Governor General's Award in poetry. You may order the book from amazon, click here. If you would like to read the catalogue's text, please visit my website and click under "Essays".

"This is a brilliant work, troubling and cruel. Writing in the first person, Jean-Marc Desgent, presents an 'I' that encompasses in one swoop of desiring, childhood, centuries past and future along with vengence and tenderness in all their forms. With its profound lucidity, this book carries the world and its pain within its pages. And the tensions of our twentieth centuries."
-Daniel Sloate

"Jean-Marc Desgent's poetic works are among the most brilliantly original and profoundly prophetic examples of contemporary Quebec poetry."
- François Paré

"Reading Jean-Marc Desgent is to follow a poet to the far reaches of being. And when one returns, one returns transfigures."
- Andrée Proulx
"The poetic territory here is one of phantom miracles in which writing, radical and free of constraints, allows the poet's vision to embrace without hesitation the dark heart of the world : 'I see way in the distance and my arms extend that far.' "
- Benoît Jutras

August 31, 2008

The Weiss Gallery presents
Alexandre Masino
Infini présent
September 4 - October 1st, 2008


 The richly textured encaustic painting of Montreal-based Alexandre Masino has to be seen in person to be fully consumed. A process of painting using pigmented molten wax, encaustic painting originated in Ancient Greece and is experiencing a resurgence these days. Only a handful have masterd this tricky medium worldwide and Alexandre Masino is surely one of them. In her catalogue essay title Exquisite Dualities written for Masino's recent Montreal exhibition Matière d'être, encaustic maven Joanne Mattera agrees -
"When it is handled well, encaustic yields color that is richer and a surface that is more tangible than conventional oil or acrylic. Masino handles the medium masterfully, wrestling from it every nuance of shape, shadow and hue. Such control does not easily flow from the brush, and certainly not when it is employed in service to representation, for unlike conventional paint that is brushed on wet and needs time to dry, encaustic is applied when it is molten, a state that exists for a second or two before it hardens. This is barely enough time to deliver the paint from the heat source to the painting's surface to each individual brushstroke is a miniature cycle in flux..."

Graduating with a BFA With Distinction from Concordia University in 1997, Masino was already immersed in the international art scene with solo exhibitions at established galleries in both Canada and the United States. Alexandre works alongside poets, writers, musicians and other artists - fusing the varied creative forms gathered from these experience into remarkable artistic projects. Embracing diverse creative stimuli has alloed Masion to carefully hone his own and unique visual language and expression. Alexandre Masino has received critical acclaim for his solo exhibitions in France, The United States and Canada and recently taught a workshop on encaustic painting at the National Encaustic Painting Conference in Massachusetts. 

Exhibition Details:

The paintings featured in the exhibition will include a selection of still life compositions but will predominantly feature landscapes - referencing images the artist captured when visiting the Rocky Mountains this spring. Many artist paint mountains yet Masino's challange the sentimentality that artist often engage in when painting the Rockies. Masino allows them to be the monumental presence and forms that they are. In a review of Alexandre Masino's fall exhibition in Montreal featured in Vie des Arts magazine (issue 208, winter 2008), Dorota Kozinska wrote, "Masino's landscapes [focus] on hilly crags and mountain lakes. Misty and lyrical, they are captivating, almost metaphysical meditations on space." In the same article Kozinska asserts - 
"[Masino] latest works usurp a particular place on the contemporary art scene."

August 24, 2008

Infini présent


September 4 - October 1st 2008
Vernissage September 4, from 5pm to 8pm

1021 6th Street SW
Calgary, Alberta
T2R 1R2

403-262-1880