 |
|
Stéphanie Béliveau (Canadian, 1966)
|
 |
Stéphanie Béliveau
Fairy 2005
|
|
 |
Stéphanie Béliveau
Pour des siècles des siècle, baiser no1 2009
|
|
 |
Stéphanie Béliveau
Pour des siècles des siècle, baiser no3 2009
|
|
|
Biography |
|
|
|
|
Stéphanie Béliveau was born in Quebec City in 1966. Over the past few years she has made a name for herself through a series of exhibitions that brought her popular and critical acclaim. Critics and art-lovers alike appreciate her conscientious approach and the quality and originality of her visual language. |
|
|
|
|
After graduating from Concordia University with first honours in drawing and painting, she was awarded a FCAR scholarship to enroll in a Master's program at the Université du Québec à Montréal, which she completed in 1993. |
|
|
|
|
Her first solo exhibition of note was Sur la terre battue (Galerie Clark, 1995), but her career really took off after she participated in Artifice 96, organised by the Saidye Bronfman Centre for the Arts. Next came a solo exhibition entitled Peintures primaires at Montreal's Galerie Trois Points (1996), where exceptionally positive reviews drew the attention of the art world, the public and several collectors to her work. The following year she won the City of Montreal's Pierre-Ayot Prize for young artists. |
|
|
|
|
This was followed by other solo exhibitions that confirmed the highly personal and resolute nature of the path the artist had chosen to follow: La chambre des plâtres (Galerie Trois Points, 1999), Dessins et contrastes (Galerie Trois Points, 2000) and Peintures d'être (Maison de la culture Côte-des-Neiges, 2003). |
|
|
|
|
During those years she participated in numerous group exhibitions: Espaces parallèles (Didactart, 1995), Eight Montreal Artists in Prague (Prague, 1997), Acquisitions 1996-97 (Musée du Québec), Acquisitions 1997-98 (Musée du Québec), Intersections Montréal-Toronto (Montreal and Toronto, 2000), Événement Tchékhov (Galerie Plein sud, 2001) and Regard sur les Prix Pierre-Ayot et Louis-Comtois (Maison de la culture Côte-des-Neiges, 2003). |
|
|
|
|
Death, the fragility of life, suffering and solitude are recurrent themes in Béliveau's work. The discomfort occasioned by such themes aside, we are touched by the human face she puts on them, the tenderness, compassion and beauty with which she treats them. This is not an artist who strives to please: she uses very basic raw materials (charcoal, reclaimed kraft paper, fur, burlap, etc.); her work retains the stains, marks and imprints of the creative process; her compositions are deliberately naïve, her figures as rigid as ancient icons and her palette is sombre mix of browns, greys and blacks on a white background. There is neither comfort nor seduction to be found there. The works of Stéphanie Béliveau have an immediate, direct impact on our conscience; the multitude of poetic thoughts and associations they elicit reconcile us, for a time, to our own fragile human existence. |
|
|
|
|
return to artnet.com