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PHÉNOMÈNE DU DORTOIR
March 6th — April 10th, 2021
Project description
Phénomène du dortoir is the charming name given to the natural synchronisation of women’s menstruations. Not without humour, this term represents, for the two artists, what should be the ideal collaboration, one that influences cycles, moods, and work methods.
As Guimond works mainly in painting and Scenna mostly in installation, the two artists have made the pact, when embarking in this project, to let go of their comfort zone and to push their limits. This project represents, for both of these Montreal artists, a first official collaboration.
The process leading to this reformulation of their practices echoes their reflections about originality, as they approach common themes together. Notably, the teenage years, this key period of existence when, filled with both hopes and constraints, one builds his/her social identity. As the artists perceive this theme as an open junction of possibilities, Phénomène du dortoir becomes a performative space, unfolding as an installation comprised of drawing, painting, sculpture, video and sound.
As the project evolves in the gallery, the public is invited to regularly visit the exhibition, and to follow it via Instagram. The gaps between the real exhibition and its virtual representation online are therefore highlighted and tackled by the artists. This is coherent with their practices, as for both Guimond and Scenna, images and/or documentation are always subject to manipulation, generating new meanings, sometimes poetic and often contradictory.
The artists would like to thank Centre Skol, Canada Council for the Arts, Centre d’art Rozynski, Centre Sagamie, the Galerie B-312 also Sarah-Jeanne Riberdy, Vincent Lafrance and more particularly Joël Vaudreuil for their invaluable help.
Photo Credit: Guy L’heureux
Isabelle Guimond lives and works in Montreal and has been represented by Galerie Simon Blais since 2018. Her work has been presented in Quebec, United States, France and Mexico. 2014 laureate of the Sylvie and Simon Blais Award for Emerging Visual Artists, she was also finalist for the Claudine and Stephen Bronfman Fellowship in Contemporary Art. In the las years, her work has been shown at Galerie de l’UQÀM, Galerie d’art d’Outremont, Galerie B-312, Galerie Laroche/Joncas, Galerie Les Territoires, Centre des arts actuels Skol, Maison de la culture Maisonneuve, Galerie Trois Points and Galerie Simon Blais. She has done residencies at Centre Sagamie, Galerie B-312 and L’Écart, where she exhibited with the collective Filles Debouttes! (Christine Major and Gabrielle Lajoie-Bergeron). In 2019, she presented La compétition des bonnes nouvelles, her most recent solo exhibition at Galerie Simon Blais.
Carolyne Scenna‘s work takes various forms, consisting of photographs, “lo-fi” videos, installations and various objects. Eager to discover prodigious entries into a world never filled enough with images, she recurrently manipulates her photographic archives, tracing back and forth between the processes she experiments. Her work presents unusual situations, bordering on the strange and the ordinary. The images that the artist puts forward unfold in a diversity of meanings, often poetic and contradictory.
Carolyne Scenna holds a Masters in Visual and Media Arts from the Université du Québec à Montréal (2017). Her work has been namely presented at Les Territoires (2015), at Parisian Laundry (2016), at Galerie de l’UQAM (2017), at Centre Clark (Pluton, 2019), ICA of Baltimore, USA (2019) and Galerie B-312 (2020). She lives and works in Montreal.
Text by Jean-Michel Quirion
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