Dialogue | Group exhibition

Dialogue | Ooloosie Saila & Josiane Lanthier
Dates: May 13 to June 13, 2021

For C.O.A, this exhibition marks an opportunity to bring together two favourites: two emerging artists in their early thirties who paint the territories that surround them. Although the landscapes that inspire them differ, Ooloosie Saila (Canadian Inuit artist from Kinngait - Cape Dorset) and Josiane Lanthier (Montreal painter expatriated in Baie-Saint-Paul) share a common vision. Through their works, they both choose to translate an emotion, the trace of a visual feeling, rather than a photographic representation of forms. We’re in presence of an interpreted reality, whether it’s the framing, the point of view or the choice of colours, the will to represent is almost absent. For the time of an exhibition, the colours of Nunavut and Charlevoix converse. The two artists propose a discussion between their environment and its representation, as well as a dialogue between themselves, but above all, a perfect abandonment to sensations.

Ooloosie Saila traces the primary forms of her works with a line that is confident, but never straight. The refined space she works in is first divided into curved and vibrant sections. Next comes the colour. She saturates the chosen space with the tip of her pencils, often in blue, attracted by the idea of drawing her own version of the landscape from her imagination rather than making a faithful reproduction. Her imagination is only matched by the immensity of the Arctic expanses that inspire her.

Through a play of colours, textures, luminosity and superimposed layers, Josiane Lanthier questions the complementary relationship between energy and colour. Conferring warmth to her cold shades, for instance, is one of her favourite plastic games. Josiane prefers colouring to drawing, and although the process is more important to her than the subject, her creations are imbued with a guiding line, that of nature, of semi-abstract landscapes.