BIO Michel Boulanger holds a bachelor’s degree in visual arts from the Université du Québec à Chicoutimi and a master’s in visual arts from the Université du Québec à Montréal, where he has also taught. He took part in the Symposium de la jeune peinture au Canada directed by Françoise Labbé, in 1985. This was the very first professional activity in his career. Since that time, his work has been shown in numerous exhibitions in Canada and abroad, including a solo exhibition at the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal.
ARTISTIC PRACTICE Michel Boulanger’s work privileges the landscape motif as a construction of reality and site par excellence of the way we represent to ourselves our connection to nature. Breaking with stereotypical depictions of the rural world, his works underscore the strangeness of landscapes marked by growing industrialisation. They are also conceived and created in the broad field of drawing. In his work this discipline is asserted as an autonomous art and its range is extended into experimental hybrid forms, bringing together hand-made drawings with 3D computer-generated imagery, moving images, sculpture and installation.
PROJECT Michel Boulanger’s project consists in taking as his object of study the space of the studio with the goal of creating bizarre extensions of its architecture and mechanics. He will undertake this work as a kind of drawing, both organic and very organised, extending in space by means of a play of intertwined branches, like that of 3D modelling software used to create forms. This volumetric drawing will convey tension between life forces and the more rationalised forces of our viewing systems for digital imagery.
