fofa_092011

May 9 - June 3

Vernissage:  May 12, 2011 at 17h

Finissage of Exhibitoins and Catalogue Launch of Sebastien Fitch: June 3, 2011 at 16h

Invasion

Eric Simon

Ste. Catherine Street Vitrines

Concurrent Exhibitions:

MAIN - Take Me Home - Ari Bayuaji, David Butler, Michael Bishop

BLACK BOX - Ballade Intime - Kesso-Line Saulnier

YORK CORRIDOR VITRINES - Following Giacometti: Painting as Research - Sebastien Fitch

 

STE. CATHERINE STREET VITRINE

Invasion: Eric Simon

I like the idea of walking into a space with a few rolls of tape in a bag and making a drawing over a period of a few weeks. It is as if the drawing already exists inside the roll of tape and my job is simply to unroll it to reveal it. Reveal it to myself. And reveal it to an audience. In fact this is not that different from drawing with a pencil and pretending that the drawing is in the pencil before I start. Except that with tape, there is the illusion that I could perhaps peel off the drawing once it is completed and roll it back into a nice compact roll of tape and carry it with me to some other location.

Some of the characteristics of my drawings are then always inherently present in the materials I choose to use. In this case the colour and the thickness of the line will not vary. But I add other restrictions such as working with only straight lines. These can vary in length and adopt one of only three directions. I am then free to improvise within the confines of these basic parameters. I enjoy working with very simple and limited means. My friend, painter David Elliott, likes to tease me on how, when I paint portraits, I use only three colours and a single brush. I like how an apparently restrictive approach can yield a wide range of possibilities. Freedom within imposed limitations. Infinity within a tiny interstice.

Because the drawings « grow » as I make them, I often imagine their expansion as a sort of wall invasion, not unlike a strange form of geometric mold. I also catch myself thinking of the Universe in expansion and how it relates to space. Theses wall tape drawings also evoke thought structures and representations of Mind. Working for 6 hours a day for the duration of the exhibition, I want to produce a drawing whose evolution passers-by will be able to follow.