The Artist
Guillaume Desrosiers Lépine is a young visual artist who has completed his studies between Canada, Brazil, and France. He completed his Master's degree in Visual and Media Arts at Université du Québec à Montréal in 2019. In 2022, he was selected from among 1,210 submissions by a jury of 10 professional artists to take part in the 72nd edition of Jeune Création at the Fiminco Foundation in Paris, a prestigious international exhibition for emerging contemporary artists. From January to June 2023, he presented a significant solo exhibition at the Beaverbrook Art Gallery in Fredericton, NB. In 2023, he was selected to represent the province of New Brunswick in the “Painting” category at the 9th Jeux de la Francophonie in Kinshasa, in the Democratic Republic of Congo. His work has been funded on numerous occasions by the New Brunswick Arts Board (ArtsNB), the Canada Council for the Arts (CCA), and the Faculté des Études Supérieures et de la Recherche (FESR) at Université de Moncton. Since 2018, Guillaume Desrosiers Lépine has been an associate professor in the Department of Visual Arts at Université de Moncton en Acadie. www.instagram.com/guillaume.lepine/ guillaumelepine.com
Process
His research in visual arts reveals the fluid, mobile aspects of his ideal type of painting. His practice takes advantage of the possibilities offered by the tools and materials that propel him. It's an oscillation between the analog and the digital, a journey without beginning or end that takes shape and is reversed in the very exercise of setting it in motion: try, fail, try again, fail better. Using simple gestures and more or less sophisticated techniques, Guillaume creates complex surfaces to reveal the plasticity that constitutes the pictorial experience. To achieve this, he uses the materiality of color, the malleability of form, the density of space, and the saturation of surface.
Inspired by the montage work of 20th- and 21st-century iconographic artists and the notion of reskilling, Guillaume develops a polymorphic, plural pictorial project that could be described as heteropictural. Through an exercise of free association and comparison, he weaves intricacies and constellations between his works to reveal contrasts and contradictions. In so doing, he questions the linear progression of his pictorial practice and asserts a pendular identity: between this and between that. In making, unmaking, and remaking, his work constantly refers back to the unfinished piece, as well as the finished one. In this way, Guillaume develops a poetic and rich exhibition curriculum that evokes the image surplus that inhabits our world and reflects on the role of painting in our post-internet experience of images. Residency Project During his residency at Rozynski Art Centre, Guillaume Desrosiers Lépine engaged in pictorial research with colored clays. Drawing from the nerikomi technique, he explored the living materiality of the ceramic medium, layering, texturizing and scoring clay to create large-scale mural compositions at the intersection of painting and ceramics. Residency Exit Event
On July 25, 2024, Guillaume Desrosiers Lépine celebrated the end of his residency which began in 2022. During the event, Guillaume briefly presented his project. A warm thank you to the New Brunswick Arts Board and the CALQ, whose support rendered this residency possible.