MONTREAL ? Four Montrealers are finalists in the RBC Canadian Painting Competition, which is worth $25,000 to the winner chosen out of 15 young artists from across the country.
Honourable mentions worth $15,000 each will be awarded to a further two artists who are in the first five years of their careers.
For the RBC competition, the country was divided into three regions, each with a jury that chose five finalists; the finalists are each represented by a single work. The 15 paintings will be shown at the Power Plant in Toronto, and winners will be announced on Nov. 29.
The Eastern Canada jury includes artist Janet Werner and gallery owner Roger Bellemare, both of Montreal, and Robin Metcalfe, director of St. Mary?s University Art Gallery in Halifax. They chose Philip Delisle of Halifax and the four Montrealers: Nicolas Ranellucci, Betino Assa, Julie Trudel and Corri-Lynn Tetz.
Werner said the jurors were looking for artists with a certain level of skill and coherence and who have achieved a personal approach. And there should be an element of surprise, she added.
For more on the RBC Canadian Painting Competition, visit tinyurl.com/7oobtx3.
Surprises are what Ranellucci finds in the details of paintings by pre-Renaissance heroes like Giotto, and in later artists like Brueghel and Mantegna.
?A snail in the foreground of a 13th-century Annunciation painting,? the UQ?M graduate said in an interview. ?Why that detail??
The details suggest a story, but Ranellucci sees them as occult phenomena whose meaning is a mystery.
For him, painting is a ritual in which he builds a collage of disparate objects, each with their own (often garish) colour. The skill with which he pulls off these seemingly childlike paintings explains his presence among the finalists.
?I?m trying to paint for everybody, to be accessible,? Ranellucci said.
To see more of Nicolas Ranellucci?s work, visit www.galeriedominiquebouffard.com.
Assa, a postgraduate student at Concordia, also creates ambiguous scenes populated by odd creatures. He injects artificial elements into natural settings to ?provoke humour, unease and contemplation,? he writes on his website. ?I?m looking for a way to create a mood that?s dark, that goes back to childhood,? Assa said in an interview.
Gathering in the Forest, 12 a.m. is populated by creatures that are scary but aren?t killing each other, he said.
Assa discovered his technique of painting on Plexiglas in a printmaking studio, where he was creating prints from inscribed Plexiglas plates. The prints lacked contrast, but when he lay the inked plate face down on white paper, he noticed how sharp and crisp the image on the plate was.
For his paintings, he cuts a drawing into the Plexiglas and then covers it with layers of transparent paint. The result is a painting of great clarity and brilliant colours.
To see more of Betino Assa?s work, visit www.betinoassa.net.
Trudel is an RBC finalist for the second time. Last year she submitted a single ?experiment? resulting from her exhaustive working process of pouring colours of ink, drop by drop, on a wood surface. Her aim is to discover ? and document ? which colours interact with the physical qualities of the medium (texture, thickness, etc.) to create an effect she can use in a painting. Her colours are heavily diluted so as to add an element of chance ? they will run unpredictably.
Her acceptance last year was a surprise, said Trudel, who has an MFA from UQ?M. She didn?t win, but judges encouraged her to try again.
This time Trudel has entered a fully realized diptych from a series based on the colours used by printers: CMYK (cyan, magenta, yellow, black; the latter is known as the key plate in printing). Three solo shows, including one at Optica in May, taught her how to present her work.
?There is a huge difference between the tests and the paintings,? she said in an interview. After a period of study, Trudel throws out or gives away much of her art. An exhibition is based on intuitive choices of what works together from the few paintings left after the long process of experimentation.
To see more of Julie Trudel?s work, visit www.julietrudel.ca.
Tetz uses images she finds on Face?book to, as she wrote in her submission to the RBC jury, ?create a visual metaphor for the widespread collapse of the middle class.?
Housefire 3 presents a disaster in the suburbs in an oval format reminiscent of souvenir plates. The format draws in the viewer because it mimics how our eyes see things, Tetz said in an interview.
The painting isn?t based on a professional news photo, but on a ?bad? photo taken by an onlooker with a connection to the house on fire. ?I like the more personal aspect of the amateur photographer,? she said.
Tetz has created album covers for artists including the Besnard Lakes. Her artwork for Land of Talk?s album Cloak and Cipher received a Juno nomination.
To see more of Corri-Lynn Tetz?s work, visit www.corrilynntetz.com.
john.o.pohl@gmail.com
? Copyright (c) The Montreal Gazette
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