Les cadavres anticipés

Matthieu Brouillard

Opening on Thursday, November 17 at 5pm
The exhibition runs from November 17 to December 17, 2005
The gallery is open Tuesday through Saturday from noon to 5 p.m.

Matthieu Brouillard's work stands alone. At first glance, based on the treatment of the images, their somber aesthetic and the ovewhelming worlds, we would be tempted to believe that they could be a possible reinterpretation of the documentary genre. But they are not… or barely. Of course, Brouillard renews with a dimension of tragedy, befitting to certain imagery within the genre, with the strange feeling of being confronted with disfunctional individuals evolving in sordid and sinister environments. Nonetheless, well above the individual drama, it's at the limits, under the uttermost intensity of things that Brouillard finds his interest. The artist appropriates the photographic apparatus to reveal its intrinsic qualities in order to raise the most paradoxical assertions and tensions.

From these complex images emerge curious correlations between documentary and theatre, between the accessment of the real seen through an extremely precise image and the surreal (an extension), that tips it into the improbable; between the unreal digitally manipulated images and the clean photographic quality that gives rise to such a strong sense of tranparency, presence and reality.

Besides a palpable attachment to a certain photographic tradition, the work of Brouillard inscribes itself in a fascinating echoe to Beckett's theatre, to the alienation effects of Brecht, and not without being infiltrated by impulses that could be attributed to David Cronenberg. Although deprived of pathos, the photographic series Les cadavres anticipés, in its unsettling intensity, disrupts common beliefs and comforts of how we live and the world in which we exist.

Matthieu Brouillard is a Montreal artist born in 1976. He is currently pursuying a Doctorate degree in Practices and Studies in Art at Université de Québec à Montréal. Les cadavres anticipés, ensuing the series L'isoloir à cannibales, is his first solo show in Montreal.

The artist would like to thank Contact Image.

Dazibao thanks the artist for his generous collaboration and its members for their support. Dazibao receives financial support from the Canada Council for the Arts, the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec, and the Conseil des arts de Montréal. Dazibao is a member of the Regroupement des centres d'artistes autogérés du Québec.