Simone Rochon
Formes fléchies

January 20 February 24, 2018

Galerie Nicolas Robert is pleased to present Formes fléchies, Simone Rochon’s third exhibition with the gallery.

It would be tempting to describe these collages with their delicate, sharp motifs as drawings: the brush strokes are evident here, as they rarely are, in the work of Simone Rochon. The mark-making appears both organic and reproducible. The flowing and bending forms are at once rigid and malleable. The artist’s compositions, which are neither abstract nor figurative, evoke modernist collages—improbable constituent parts affixed to a truncated object, next to yesterday’s newspaper clippings. The materiality of the paper is emphasized by the unaltered background, where washes were applied in earlier works. The artist denies any intent to convey a sense of photographic realism but similarities can be found with the treatments and sensuousness associated with this medium.

There is no obvious source of light in Simone’s works and in earlier collages the objects are not transparent. In this series of collages, however, the pieces of paper bring to mind a film placed on a light table, or X-rays viewed on a light box. The two-tone assembled fragments are reminiscent of negatives manipulated in the darkroom, or certain digital post-production effects, or the stroke of a wet brush drawn across a sheet of photosensitive paper. The suggestion of conventional photographic techniques extends to the subtly textured shadows with their metallic sheen.

References to scale remain elusive. Only a few supported or floating forms suggest an indistinct horizon. The sinuous shadows are left by streaks of ink in some places, in others by deposited pigment. The illusion of angular volumes satisfies our longing for three-dimensional representation. Set on a flat surface, they seem to extend into sculptural dimension, while the shadows remain in the same plane as the paper.    

The accompanying sculptures play out these tensions. By bending, twisting, folding, unfolding, and elongating the surfaces, the artist forces two dimensions to become three, while retaining something of their two-dimensional character.  As is often the case in the artist’s work, one surface reveals another—something like its negative: the precisely cut and polished material standing in contrast to its unpolished, textured shadow.  

Simone Rochon olds a Masters in Visual and Media Arts (UQAM). Simone's practice is based mostly in collage, drawing and sculpture. Her work has been shown recently in Toronto at Angell Gallery (2017), in Calgary at Art Commons (2017) and in Montreal at the Maison de la culture Côte-des-Neiges (2016). Her work can be found in a number of private and public collections, including the Collection Desjardins d’œuvres d’art, the Prêt d’œuvres d’art collection of the MNBA, the Ville de Montréal and Loto-Québec collection.

- Charlotte Lalou Rousseau