Isabelle Hayeur
dal 11/5/2009 al 20/6/2009
Segnalato da
11/5/2009
Isabelle Hayeur
L'espace Photographique Contretype, Bruxelles
Formes de monuments. Since the end of the 1990s, Hayeur has been taking panoramic photographs which reveal her unusual critique of the North American anthropic landscape. The artist's ultra-realist images are, nevertheless, a little artificial, because they have been made using different sources. Exhibition curated by Claudine Roger.
Since the end of the 1990s, Isabelle Hayeur has been taking panoramic photographs which reveal her unusual critique of the North American anthropic landscape. Her images represent places where the debate over land-use is being played out, such as the division of land into building-plots on the outskirts of towns, waste ground, places where the landscape is being exploited and other unusual and disenchanted locations. The artist's ultra-realist landscapes are, nevertheless, a little artificial, because they have been made using different sources. Just like a painter, Isabelle Hayeur retouches existing landscapes and uses fragments of images from a variety of origins and temporalities, and nimble-fingeredly produces a displacement of meaning, constructing very strange places, at the outer limits of probability. The unknown, or unknowable, places she constructs by blending different places together into one, demonstrate weaknesses that focus our attention on our relationship with the environment; the transformation and development of towns and cities; the strata of urban history; the insertion of towns and cities into the countryside, and the many different styles of urban living. Her latest project, Formes de monuments (2008-2009) was created in Brussels within this framework. By juxtaposing urban blight and public statuary, these new compositions metaphorically show the changing city and the uneasy cohabitation of standardised town-planning with cultural identity. The result of this cohabitation are images that are seductive and disturbing at the same time, located between devastated land and the commemorative spaces of history.
Claudine Roger, curator of the exhibition
Isabelle Hayeur was born in Montreal in 1969. She is known primarily for her large digital photomontages. She also produced several site-specific installations, public art commissions and videos. Her works have been widely exhibited across Canada, Europe and the United States. She has exhibited at the Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal (MACM), the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MassMoca), the Museum of Contemporary Photography (Chicago), the Casino Luxembourg forum d'art contemporain (Luxembourg), the Neuer Berliner Kuntsverein (Berlin) and at the Rencontres de la photographie à Arles 2006 (France). She is represented by Pierre-François Ouellette Gallery on Montreal.
This exhibition is a collaboration Wallonie-Bruxelles/Québec between L'espace Photographique Contretype (Brussels) and VOX contemporary image (Montreal). Acknowledgements to the Conseil des Arts et des Lettres du Québec, the Minister of International Relations (Quebec), the Canada Council for the arts, the Délégation générale du Québec in Brussels and to the Centre culturel Canadien in Paris.
Image: Le Congo Reconnaissant I. 2008 - 2009, from "Formes de monuments" series
Opening reception: Tuesday May 12th from 6 PM to 9 PM
L'espace Photographique Contretype
1, avenue de la Jonction B - 1060 Bruxelles