2023 | MARIE-CLAIRE BLAIS - Noises went silent 
TORONTO
Feb 17 - Apr 8, 2023 

Opening: Thursday, Feb 16, 2023, 5:00 pm - 7:00 pm.

Blouin Division is pleased to present Noises went silent, a solo exhibition of new works by Marie-Claire Blais in Toronto.  

Consisting of two new series of Blais’s paintings on burlap, Noises went silent and Shadows swept away, this exhibition seeks to represent the ineffable powers of nature through moments of turbulence. Closely studying the conceptual force of “the fold” as a site of endless movement, space, and time, Blais presents us with the transitory patterns of the immeasurable sky, under which all of humanity’s myths and desires are gathered in the quest for knowledge of ourselves throughout time.  

Using a colour palette decidedly reminiscent of twilight and dawn, Blais visualizes air currents in perpetual flux, as the instants when stillness turns to uncertainty. The same pinks, yellows and blues make up Giovanni Antonio Fasolo’s cloud fresco on the ceiling of Teatro Olimpica in Vicenza, Italy. With Blais’s interest in the freeform of the cloud as the intermediate construction permitting us to connect the physical with the metaphysical, her new works stir up the invisible, changeable forces of nature that interrupt Fasolo’s pristine sky of eternal quietude.  

As Gilles Deleuze writes in his explanation of the fold, it is inseparable from wind. From this starting point, Blais expresses how the world around us can be interpreted as a continuous twisting and weaving through time and space, wherein all things unfold and refold without end.  

Marie-Claire Blais studied architecture at the University of Montreal before devoting herself full-time to her visual art practice. Her work explores various experiences of movement in space, focusing on the perceptions that emanate from these encounters in memory. Her work has been shown in Canada and internationally, with notable solo exhibitions at Guido Molinari Foundation (Montréal, 2021; 2013), McMichael Canadian Art Collection (Kleinburg, 2019), and the Canadian Cultural Centre in Paris (2017).