PAUL GRÉGOIRE

Meeting with Paul Grégoire

Although painting is the mode of expression I favor since 2015, my sustained practice of sculpture, installation, performance, video, music, literature, and osteology continuously feeds and influences my pictorial universe. All these approaches are part of a same system that I use to communicate and explore the narrative potential of my creative ideas. 

My practice addresses the concerns we have about our era and the human condition. I seek to explore the complexity of the being and to portray the struggle resulting from inner duality. Death and injustice are themes of particular interest to me. My work can be qualified as narrative with a touch of dark humour. I often use animal representation as a symbol of human feelings. 

From one medium to the other, I look for the most spontaneous way, even the most direct, to translate my hungry imaginary. Therefore, for me, the idea has always preponderance over the means used to bring it into the world. 

As a multidisciplinary artist, my ongoing research work led me to adopt a head-on approach to several disciplines linked to the visual arts. From 1970 to 2005, my artistic cursus mainly translates itself into sculpture and installation. I presented solo exhibitions in several contemporary art galleries in Québec. 

Starting in 1980, I engaged into a saxophonist career where shows became a lieu where music, theatre and artistic performance meet. In the 1990s, performance became a recurrent feature to my approach. I was invited to different international action art festivals. And I was the organizer of a performance event in Québec from 2001 to 2005. 

Author of a column in the arts magazine ESSE for 10 years since 1985, I have also published four novels. 

In the early 2000s, the discovery of osteology strongly fueled my aesthetical preoccupations. It is through painting however, which I have been practicing full-time since 2015, that this new source of inspiration materializes itself. 



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