Great Encounter

“Painting is writing with light, said Salva. You must first learn its alphabet, then its grammar. Only then will you be able to master style and magic.” – Carlos Ruiz Zafón.

Despite a climactic career of fifty years, Christian Bergeron remains the best kept secret of Québec’s young history of art. This in spite of the fact that his paintings are selling like hot cakes, here and elsewhere. Indeed, prestigious galleries in the United States, in Europe and largely in Canada, are displaying his undeniable powerfully expressive and attractive works.

A reserved man, of great stature, with piercing eyes, and extremely sensitive, from the outset he states that this will be the third journalistic interview of his fifty years career. Yet the man is rather talkative and knowledgeable about art. I am rather spellbound. His comments on the topicality of art are ringing in my ears as a symphony attuned with knowledge, experience and success.

Text by Michel Bois

Christian Bergeron is represented by :

Galerie Porte Rouge : 61, Saint Jean Baptiste Street, Baie-Saint-Paul, QC – 418 760-8830 [email protected]

Galeries Cimon : 77, Du Sault-Au-Matelot Street, Québec, QC – 418 694-7959 / 35, de Buade Street, Québec, QC – 418 694-7999 [email protected]

421 Gallery : 560 Raymer Avenue, Kelowna, BC – 250 448-8888 [email protected]

Sculpting Words: An Easy Task

Forms, Volume and Space

Artisan sculptors Viatour-Berthiaume impart a new dimension to sculpture. Indeed, Marie-Annick Viatour and Gaétan Berthiaume’s sculptures must not be looked upon simply as objects, but also be viewed in terms of the space they occupy with their movement and of the narrative the duo introduces into their works. Their sculptures are not merely seeking to please, they bear profound meaning. The duo ensures that social interaction is an integral part of their production and of the spectator’s visual experience. Combining beauty, ingenuity and playfulness, the duo’s sculptures tell stories that are at times funny, at times poetic and at other times quite dramatic.

At the end of the 1920s, when American sculptor Alexander Calder created his small circus, he was greatly influenced by the volumes of that universe. His work bears witness to an artistic thinking based on the tension that exists between balance and imbalance. In the same vein as Calder, by finding ways of imparting movement to their sculptures, Viatour-Berthiaume developed a unique artistic approach that incorporates movement to the sculpting gesture. Early in their creations, the two sculptors, Visual Arts graduates from Concordia University, adopted a practice anchored in the tradition of expressive arts and crafts by endorsing ancestral know-how. Simultaneously, the duo articulates the space, the mechanics and the movement of the work and emphasizes with high accuracy the plasticity of the object through a redefined sculptural approach.

Les jumeaux Mosquito, wood, acrylic, metal, 18 x 46 x 14 cm, 2006

Text by Marie-France Bégis

photo © Gaétan Berthiaume

To learn more about Viatour-Berthiaume’s exhibition venues: www.viatourberthiaume.com/