Charcoal Imaginings

Event: Two charcoal drawing workshops

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Time: Saturday November 16, 2024, 9:00 pm - 12:00 noon, 1:00 pm - 3:00 pm

Space: Galerie Cache in Montreal

Each participant will create a charcoal drawing by freely interpreting source material with heightened sensitivity to composition and to the effects of light and atmosphere. All materials will be supplied upon arrival. Historical and contemporary art examples will be presented and contextualized (pictorialism, modernism, postmodernism and metamodernism) to better situate drawing today. Each participant will be given a sheet of high quality paper already prepared with a charcoal ground by Frank, as well as compressed charcoal, vine charcoal, a variety of eraser sizes, and paper masks for creating clean edges if desired. Participants can work in a representational style, stylized, semi-abstract or abstract approaches of their choosing. The common denominator: exploiting the greyscale to create a full composition of elements that appear to advance and recede in space. Methodology will include sketching, blocking in, adjusting and refining. Participants will be encouraged to experiment and navigate away from popular charcoal drawing approaches like conventional portraiture of people and animals or the straight copying of photographic imagery. The objective is that each individual complete a meaningful and full composition, through a mix of exploration, risk-taking, concentration, strategic process, discovery, mutual inspiration and fun.

Rock'oco

Event: Belgo building season opening at CIRCA with the Rock’oco  exhibition

Time: September 12, 2024, 5:30 pm

Space: CIRCA art actuel, 372 St. Catherine West, Montreal

The season opening for the Belgo building is upon us, featuring a dozen art galleries and new exhibitions, including the new exhibition Rock’oco @circa_art_actuel to which I have contributed a piece conceived for the theme. It includes a mix of decorative floral elements, an eclipse element, and a heavy hexagonal metal frame. This piece provides a preview of a series of interdisciplinary works that I am producing for my next solo show entitled The Great Negation, scheduled for next year.

Rock’oco is a collective effort, achieved under the direction of Émilie Granjon, with super-organized Francesca Penserini behind the scenes.

Éphémères imaginaires

Event: Group exhibition

Time: August 8 to October 6, 2024

Space: Galerie Montcalm, Gatineau

Éphémères imaginaires is a multifaceted drawing-based project, with no determined boundary as to how drawing can be manifested through a range of disciplines including sculpture, installation and video. Conceived and co-directed by artists and curators Giuseppe Di Leo and Frank Mulvey, notions of ephemerality are expressed through a series of exhibitions and publications. With varied incarnations of content, contributors, and exhibition locations, the project is mutable, continually evolving, a shifting field of thinkers and creators.

Lorraine Dagenais, Giuseppe Di Leo, Emy Gagnon Gélinas, Véronique La Perrière M, Frank Mulvey and Francesca Penserini present drawings that range from intimate pieces to large installation work. Each artist questions, from their unique perspective, how ephemerality might be embraced rather than lamented, how art and imagination might serve as an antidote to the fleeting nature of human experience. In addition, composer Alexander MacSween has created a “unifying sonic envelope” to accompany the visual experience “without asking to be heard as a separate work, like a film score.” Writer and artist Victoria LeBlanc reflects on the significance of these explorations in an introductory essay for the exhibition catalogue.