François Vaillancourt
Mirage of Memory
Mixed-media Intallation
East Gallery

Montreal Artist

PRESS RELEASE

As part of the 1988 Artist Studio Project, Francois Vaillancourt's solo exhibition will open in Mercer Union's East Gallery Tuesday September 6th at 8:00 pm and continue through Saturday October 1st.

Creating a dialogue between painting and photography, Montreal artist François Vaillancourt explores the relationship between the images produced by these two media, and their respective attributes. Mirage of Memory, his project for Mercer Union, will involve the installation of a mosaic of photographs and the memory-interrupted reproduction of these photographic images as paintings rendered on the gallery walls.

Vaillancourt's installations evoke a deliberate sense of intrigue; attempting to render illusion more real than reality itself, he draws the spectator into a game of 'hide and seek with reality'. The photographic images in this installation represent places viewed from a great distance. The images produced are relatively sparse with few details visible. Acting as fertile ground for the artist's imagination, they allow for the addition of memory-induced details.

A graduate of the University du Quebec in Montreal and the Banff Centre, Vaillancourt has participated in exhibitions in Montreal, Calgary, Banff, Vancouver and Toronto since 1983.

A public talk by the artist will take place at Mercer Union in conjunction with his exhibition, Wednesday September 7 at 8:45 pm. The talk, which will be conducted in French, will focus on the development of Vaillancourt's work in relationship to the installation on exhibition.

The Artist Studio Project, previously mounted in the summers of 1985 and 1987, creates an opportunity for artists to develop site-specific work or work rarely accommodated in a gallery context. This project encourages exploration and experimentation, and the development of new or varied methods of working. This year two artists, Francois Vaillancourt and Jessica Stockholder, were selected to develop installations within the gallery over a six week period, followed by an exhibition of the completed work.