Magalie Guérin
Magalie Guérin’s work begins with seeking out a shape. She observes her surroundings by making photographs and sketches: the forms in the architecture, the outlines of furniture, and the contours of limbs. The painting begins as a sculptural translation of an investigation. A template of the shape is transferred onto the surface of a canvas, embedded with thick layers of gesso so that its raised edges remain fixed, unmovable. Then follows an approach that is mostly intuitive, as she layers with oil paint. The process of construction/deconstruction begins as she aspires to uncover complex relationships, contained within the multi-layered painted surfaces, that also reveal the history of their making.
Currently, Magalie Guérin is making multiple, simultaneous paintings. They are mostly in pairs. The mark-making is copied and then repeated across each canvas. When the surfaces have achieved a rich level of history and she is satisfied with their visual resolution, she separates the paintings and continues building them individually, exploring the concept of resolution. How and when is the work finished? Curious about the multitude of possibilities that a shared origin offers, similar to how siblings, twins, ultimately can end up wholly different from one another.
Magalie Guérin (b. Montreal, 1973) is an artist based in Marfa, TX. She holds an MFA in Painting and Drawing from the School of the Art Institute in Chicago, where she resided for over a decade. Her work has been exhibited internationally including solo exhibitions at Sikkema Jenkins, NY (2023); Corbett vs. Dempsey, Chicago (2022); Galerie Nicolas Robert, Montreal, Toronto (2024,2020); and Amanda Wilkinson, London (2020), amongst others. Notable group exhibitions include 50 Paintings at the Milwaukee Art Museum (2023); Andrew Rafacz, Chicago (2023) and Anton Kern WINDOW, NY (2021).
Her work is in the collections of Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, Speed Art Museum, DePaul Art Museum, Hydro-Québec, and the Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec. She is the author of NOTES ON, a compilation of studio writings published by The Green Lantern Press in 2016 (second edition 2019), and teaches at SAIC and College of DuPage. Guérin is the recipient of two Pollock-Krasner grants (2024, 2018), a Pace Award for a mid-career painter at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown (2019) and a Chinati Foundation residency (2018). She is represented by Sikkema Jenkins & Co in New York, Corbett vs. Dempsey in Chicago, and Galerie Nicolas Robert in Montreal, Toronto.
Recent Exhibitions
Chapitre III - Group exhibition
From April 4 to May 25, 2024
A Rythm not a Plot - Group exhibition
From January 13 to February 19, 2022
A Bow Down
From November 28 to January 16, 2021
Magalie Guérin
From May 25 to June 29, 2019
