Aujourd’hui Encore began as a casual discussion between Yves Trépanier and myself about the Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal 2016 exhibition ELLES Aujourd’hui, which featured the work of Marie-Claude Bouthillier, Wanda Koop, Christine Major, Angèle Verret, Carol Wainio, and Janet Werner.

ELLES Aujourd’hui’s curatorial thematic focused upon the medium of painting and how the exhibition’s featured artists negotiate with abstraction, figuration, hybridity, and counter-narratives within their painting production. From this conversation evolved a list of artists we both admire who engaged with these issues from a multiplicity of mediums and methods, and how the tensions of representation and its manufacture is an inextricable pivot point within their work.

This was how Yves and I began this project, and together we generated many lists of artists and sub themes, which brought us to the conclusion that this conversation should be physically realized not only in exhibition form, but within the breadth of multiple combinations and permutations at the gallery.

Many of the works in this exhibition have never been shown before, and were made exclusively for this exhibition, and based entirely upon the participating artists’ interests.  Of primary concern to us was to put artists together that we admire without an over-determined or dictated curatorial framework – to prioritize trust in the strength of the artist and her work to develop unanticipated and meaningful linkages, disruptions, and breaks, both individually and as a grouping within this exhibition, which we hope, is the first of several.                       

Luanne Martineau