NEW PUBLICS
Celestial Mechanics
April 26, 2024 – July 13, 2024
Artist
Diane Landry
Curator
VOX, Centre de l’image contemporaine
Overview
The Foreman Art Gallery invites children to discover contemporary art with this brand new exhibition created just for them! With Celestial Mechanics, artist Diane Landry offers young audiences an artistic, philosophical and ecological reflection on the notion of time. Using everyday items and repurposed materials brought to life through movement, light, sound and video, she explores the distinct time scales specific to humanity, nature and the universe. Through her creative, poetic lens, the artist transforms these simple objects – including bicycle wheel rims, plastic bags and water bottles – into long-term signifiers of our lifestyle choices. Diane Landry’s kinetic works will prompt children to ask questions about how time passes – quickly or slowly, as the case may be!
Artist
Diane Landry lives and works in Quebec City. She first studied natural science technology and worked in an agricultural research center for 5 years. At the age of 25, she decided to become an artist, assuming her dream as a necessity. She went back to school and obtained a BFA from Université Laval (1987) and an MFA from Stanford University (2006) in California. She thought she was a painter, but through studio practice and everyday reality, she naturally moved towards the production of installation and performance works influenced by readymade and her preoccupation with recycling. In short, she tinkers, she patents. She likes to put herself in contexts that shake up her creative habits, by doing artist residencies across various cultures. These stays disrupt her creative reflexes and lead her to constantly renewed challenges. Her works have been widely shown in Canada, the United States, Latin America, several European countries, China and Australia. In 2014, she was awarded the Jean-Paul Riopelle career grant, offered by the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec. She received one of the prestigious John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation grants in New York, in 2015. She delivered numerous commissions for art projects and her work is included in several collections. Landry is represented by Vivianeart Gallery (Calgary) and Carl Solway Gallery (Cincinnati, Ohio).
