Simon Petepiece
Clearing Corridor Chamber Cave
From September 13 to October 26, 2024
Galerie Nicolas Robert is pleased to present Clearing Corridor Chamber Cave, Simon Petepiece’s second solo exhibition with the gallery. Using a combination of drawing, painting and sculpture, this new body of work explores the idea of the cloister as both an architectural space and an insular way of existence. Developed as a method of separating monastic orders from the outside world, the cloister functions as an architectural means of shaping devotional practice. Allowing individuals to live within a spatial embodiment of an idealized religious life.
Drawing from the rich historical lexicon of devotional iconography and ornamentation, the show imagines a monastic compound through a series of renderings and architectural objects. Created from sheets of drywall and steel studs, the work uses these two ubiquitous materials as both recognizable objects and a substrate. Exploiting the thin, lightweight and economical properties of these products to make objects with an incongruous relationship between form and materiality.
In the drywall works, views of a cloister's interior spaces are rendered through incised lines and layers of plaster. Using a reductive language of simplified perspectives and forms, these images contain the skeletal outlines of spaces in which the boundaries and solidity of the environment is unclear. Presented alongside these images are steel stud sculptures that exist at a scale between object and installation. Imaged as architectural fragments, their twisted and bent forms appear as artifacts pulled from the cloister. Within the gallery the work is positioned with specific sightlines in mind, allowing each work to be encountered in a sequence that evokes the processional choreography found in Christian architecture.
Through this dialogue between depictions of architectural space and its built form, the exhibition celebrates the theatrical relationship of painting, sculpture and architecture in devotional spaces. In this way, using the formal and symbolic qualities of the cloister as a window into the experience of its inhabitants.
Working directly with construction materials and processes, Simon Petepiece’s practice explores how architectural spaces reflect and manifest our cultural beliefs. Creating objects that exist between sculpture and two-dimensional media, he uses ubiquitous materials like drywall and steel studs as both symbolic elements and substrate for drawing and painting. Recent exhibitions include solo shows at Espace Maurice, Montreal (2023) and Galerie Nicolas Robert, Montreal (2023) and a duo show at the City Hall Art Gallery, Ottawa (2022). Simon Petepiece (b. 1992, Ottawa, ON) lives and works in Montreal and holds a Master’s degree in architecture from Carleton University (2018). His work can be found in the City of Ottawa Art Collection.