Geneviève Cadieux
Passages to abstraction
Here you may see the best portrait that, later, I was able to make of him
A Retrospective Exhibition
Here you may see the best portrait that, later, I was able to make of him. Passages into abstraction looks back on 27 years of Geneviève Cadieux’s work. Guest curator Vincent Bonin has selected a body of works that marks the transition from figuration to abstraction, which begins in the early 1980s. In the publication that accompanies the show, Bonin explains that “although it is a retrospective exhibition, the works on view are not presented in a chronological order. Rather, their installation, both in Halifax and Joliette, aims to create other associative networks”. The installation is the result of a collaborative effort between the curator and the artist.
Curator: Vincent Bonin
Artist’s Approach
Geneviève Cadieux uses a variety of materials as different from one another as glass and bronze, sound, light and video. Though her work may make use of engraving techniques, her preference turns to the photographic image and moving pictures as means of exploring the poetics of perception. Being particularly interested in questions dealing with vision and the gaze in 20th century culture, she focuses on the means by which the photographic image is endowed with evocative powers and on the mechanically reproduced image’s power to evoke
Biographies
Geneviève Cadieux
Geneviève Cadieux lives and works in Montreal. Since the beginning of the 1980’s her work has been exhibited widely in group shows, including the following biennials: Montreal, São Paulo, Sydney and Venice (1990), where she represented Canada. In addition to these prestigious venues, her work has been the subject of a significant number of solo shows the world over and is part of several private and public collections. Geneviève Cadieux is associate professor of photography in the Department of Visual Art at Concordia University in Montreal and the recipient of the 2011 Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts.
Vincent Bonin
Vincent Bonin lives and works in Montreal. He was the curator of several exhibitions and author of a number of publications, including Protocoles documentaires (1965-1967) a two-part exhibition held at the Leonard & Bina Ellen Gallery of Concordia University (Montreal) in 2007 and 2008; Traffic: Conceptual Art in Canada (1965-1980), co-curated with Grant Arnold, Catherine Crewston, Barbara Fischer, Michèle Thériault and Jayne Warck, which toured Canada from 2010 to 2013; Materializing “Six Years”: Lucy Lippard and the Emergence of Conceptual Art, an exhibition devoted to art critic Lucy Lippart, co-curated with Catherine J. Morris and presented at the Elizabeth Sackler Center for Feminist Art at the Brooklyn Museum in 2012-2013 and a project devoted to the reception of “French Theory” in the English-speaking art world.
Here you may see the best portrait that, later, I was able to make of him. Passages into abstraction is a travelling exhibition produced by the Musée d’art de Joliette with the generous support of Canadian Heritage.