Carl Trahan
La nuit est aussi un soleil
February 10 to March 13, 2021
Galerie Nicolas Robert is pleased to present La nuit est aussi un soleil, a new exhibition of works by Carl Trahan. In preparation for this exhibition, the artist took an interest, among other things, in the emergence of abstract art around 1900, specifically the influence of different spiritual and occult movements on the elaboration of this form of expression. He also became interested in the concept of darkness-mysticism as addressed by the contemporary philosopher Eugene Thacker.
Visual artists credited for developing abstract art were influenced by the occult, theosophy and anthroposophy. Some of these artists were mediums while others saw themselves as initiates. Their experiments were carried out in a context of spiritual crisis generated by modernity’s materialism and nihilism — a context that brought some thinkers and artists to seek access to superior and regenerating realities.
Following his research, Carl Trahan has produced a multidisciplinary body of work that refers to historical sources dealing with the fourth dimension, proto-monochrome, Western nihilism and Buddhism’s absolute nothingness as well as the search for light through darkness, in a sort of mystical reversal.
Born in Montreal (QC), Carl Trahan holds a bachelor's and a master's degree in Fine arts from Université du Québec à Montréal (1988, 1994). His work has been presented regularly in various solo and group exhibitions since the mid-1990s, including in Havana, Berlin, Rome, Toronto and Créteil (France). Carl Trahan has also participated in several artist residencies, among others in Berlin, Paris, Rome as well as Espoo, Finland. In 2016, the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec awarded him its prize in contemporary art and devoted its first museum exhibition to him in 2017. In 2017 and 2019, the Musée d'art contemporain des Laurentides presents two of the three components of the project Das Gleitende.
