March 24 - April 30, 2011 Reception Thursday March 24, 6 - 8 pm
Mike Weiss Gallery is pleased to present �Failures�, our first solo exhibition by Canadian artist Marc S�guin. War images, churches in ruin, iconic portraits of an assassin, a billionaire and a pope make up more than a dozen new paintings with ash, charcoal and oil on raw canvas. Using found images culled from the internet, history and text books, S�guin portrays moments in social, political, historical and personal timelines that are marked by the absence of success. From crumbling social institutions to a disintegrating religious authority and a vanished spiritual transcendence in art, S�guin�s work demands that viewers confront humanity�s failure to progress.
S�guin creates near-photographic quality grisailles only to deface the surface with clusters of expressive, ecstatic strokes of bold color or piles of deep black. These gestures are a nod to the spiritual power of Abstract Expressionism as well as an act of defiance to the authority of The Academy. By using ash as a medium � the last remnant of burnt matter which constitutes the corporeal and that which could not be further destroyed � S�guin resuscitates the discarded vestiges by assigning it an alternate function. The paintings are turned into an organic eulogy to that which no longer exists.
By alluding to historical events � the German massacre of a French town, the Holocaust, an assassination attempt � and failed ideologies such as the institution of marriage and the Church�s ability to protect, the paintings become commemorations of non-successes, the debris of crumbling near-achievements and forgotten debacles. Energy, viewers are reminded, cannot be destroyed, but only sublimated. The in-between process on the way to our goals is where life happens. S�guin�s paintings, with their whispered irony of failures, become a reminder of life.
Marc S�guin (b. 1970, Ottawa, Ontario) currently lives and works in Montreal, Qu�bec and Brooklyn, NY. S�guin has exhibited extensively in Canada and the United States and has work in numerous museums and collections including Mus�e d'Art Contemporain de Montr�al, Mus�e National des Beaux-Arts du Qu�bec, Mus�e des Beaux-arts de Montr�al, Fran�ois Pinault Collection, Biblioth�que Nationale du Qu�bec, and the Cirque du Soleil Collection to list a few. When not painting in his Brooklyn studio, he spends his time in Montr�al where he is an avid writer, hunter and harvester of maple syrup.
S�guin�s work and life was the recent subject of a feature-length documentary; Bull�s eye, un peintre � l�aff�t, (A Painter on the Watch) by writer/director Bruno Boulianne and S�guin�s first novel, La foi du braconnier (The Faith of a Poacher) published by Lem�ac, is due to be released in English in April 2011.
For further information or images, please contact Anna Ortt, Director at [email protected]
Mike Weiss Gallery 520 West 24th Street, New York, NY 10011 Between 10th and 11th Avenues Nearest Subway: C/E 23rd Street & 8th Avenue Tel: 212- 691-6899 Fax: 212-691-6877 Gallery Hours: Tues-Sat 10 to 6 www.mikeweissgallery.com
