Galerie D’Este is pleased to present Coexistence(s), a solo exhibition of recent works by painter Pierre-Yves Girard.

The premise of Coexistence(s) is to bring together different material elements of a painting to coexist on a canvas, in the same manner that living species coexist within a space. How do these elements occupy and spread across the canvas? If different, even opposite one another in physical nature, is it pertinent that these elements encounter and dialogue with one another within the same restrained context? Is it possible that a new equilibrium emerges from this encounter, promising of a richer and more diversified future? These questions form the laboratory for the present exhibition and bear witness to Girard’s first contact with the challenges presented by coexistence.Whether involving borders, symbiosis, fusion or confrontation, strategies for shared space can be as varied as the imagination. Here, they form a prelude to new visual language, where diverse pictorial interventions encounter one another, and synergize.

Girard is interested in the “organic” and “physical” qualities that oil painting has to offer, and it is from this perspective that he has approached the medium for fourteen years. A distinctive collection of pictorial material has emerged from his past investigations, each related to specific methods or tools. Until recently, these varied and distinct elements have developed individually, linearly, and at separate moments. With the current exhibition, the artist aims to break with pictorial isolationism. His current approach toward coexistence is attributable to technical innovation; the recent discovery of a particular varnish that has had a catalytic effect upon his practice. A benign substance in otherwise uninitiated hands, the material allows this seasoned artist to apply unlimited material interventions upon the same canvas by harnessing traces of silicone and rubber upon oil. It has become a formidable tool for the artist, providing him with the previously unthinkable luxury of uniting the ensemble of elements with which he has experimented over past years together on the same canvas. Coexistence(s) marks the arrival of unprecedented pictorial materiality.

Born in 1982 in Chicoutimi, Pierre-Yves Girard lives and works in Montreal. A graduate of the Université du Quebec à Montréal with a degree in visual arts, he has been a member of Centre Clark since 2006, was featured in a solo exhibition at the Maison de la culture Frontenac in October 2015, and participated in the group exhibition Projet Homa II – Les espaces reciproques at the Maison de la culture Maisonneuve in 2014. He was awarded a production residency at the Centre Sagamie in 2013. Girard’s work can be found in numerous private and corporate collections.