MICHEL BELLEAU -

Like a big bird glancing through its territory, the vast glance of Michel Belleau, displayed in each of the paintings, invites us to see the world from the top. The painting, being imagined territory, investigates, the aerial view of the painter making us cross cities, regions and countries, from the borders up to the continental drift. A topographer fascinated by the road maps with drawn roads which are lead by chance, Belleau cuts its pictorial spaces into urban territories where human beings' circulate in towns, and in virgin territories where immense areas of water, forests, meadows, deserts and mountains seem unchanging. Making reference to the acceleration of the movements and the communications, the characteristics of a civilization which invented satellites and GPS to locate exactly the place where the man is situated on the surface of the Earth, the abstract art of Belleau seems to ask the concrete questions : "Where from do we come from and where are we going?"

Between the wild beauties of the nature and those, artificial, the culture which runs on oil, the painter makes us travel towards inaccessible realms with secret paths, and this afternoon, he throws us into the traffic, propels us on the freeways of the hope, stuns us in heat exchangers and traffic circles, invites us at the crossroads and abruptly stops us at a dead end.

As well as he says it himself: "to paint, it is to leave by chance." Any departure supposes a movement, a route through a road network and a destination. As he paints flats by listening to some music (more particularly jazz), the point of departure of each of Michel Belleau's paintings always consists of a spontaneous gesture, a swing of the hand, lively and brief, which frees the trajectory of the line. Bent, straight, angular or circular, the line, always in relief, holds the sketch in place and defines at once the rhythm, the route and subsequent structuralization of the crossed space. His poetic space tries to meditate the weather of time in which it is necessary to cross the distances which separate the human beings.

Most of the time, everything turns around a point of lively, even sensational color, which gives its dynamics to the work and which considers place of point of reference as the reader. Masses of shadow and light, dark or clear zones appear clearly, in four cardinal points of the painting, which bring the colors of four elements to the foreground: of the dark in the brilliant, all the range of the overalls where the areas of water escape, like the river in the sea. Then, brownish tints of the earth, yellowish nuances of the air, green tones of plains and forests. Finally, of the opaque mass of the purplish blacks, which darken the solitude of the man, often a mysterious luminosity, a promise of a housing environment where the happiness to live together reigns.

But one of the characteristics of Michel Belleau's paintings, sensitive and subtle in its colors, is the consistency of the transparency. Having developed a pointed sense of the chromatics, the fusion and the evanescence of colors, he knows how to veil the visible and at the same time reveal the invisible. Making it, each of his paintings is a vivifying dream, an exciting risk.

© Raôul Duguay (March 10th, 2009)


ARTISTIC STEP

Michel Belleau (1960) has studied the graphic techniques, very quickly turning to drawing, the lithography, engraving and for a few years, painting. He has exposed for 20 years and his works belong to several collections of prestige public and private. "The artist shows the subtlety of his matter by integrating within the same framework a joining, gestural support and a graphics which transform extended from the fabric in a zone of shock, a place of contrast and assertion which imposes its dynamics. It prolongs this initial movement in apparently abstract fabrics where one returned purified and preserved this energetic and constant feature which is, with a little margin, its signature."
(Jules Arbec, Course, vol. 6 NO5)

ILLUSTRATIONS

2002      
  Jaquette du CD de Yvan Belleau, Clair et net

1995      
  Jaquette du CD du groupe Dixieband, Concert à Frontenac

CITATIONS

2002      
  La peinture au Québec depuis les années 1960, Robert Bernier, Éditons de l'Homme, p. 210-211

2001      
  Célébration des marées à Rivière-du-Loup, La Presse, Lamia Gritli, p. C3, 8 août 2001
   2 306e oeuvre de la collection Loto-Québec, Parcours de l'informateur des arts (Vol. 7 no 4)

2000      
  Parcours de l'informateur des arts, Jules Arbec (Vol. 6 no 5)

1998      
  Le pluralisme dans l'art au Québec, Guy Robert, Éditions Iconia

VISUAL DOCUMENTS

2003      
  L'objet fétiche, émission Tablo (Art TV), production Léa Pascal Inc.

INDIVIDUAL EXHIBITIONS

2001     
  Virus3, exposition thématique avec la participation littéraire et musicale de Raôul Duguay, La galerie Encadrex, Montréal

2000      
  Sens2, Espace Parcours, Montréal

1998      
  Centre Elgar, Île-des-Soeurs (oeuvres sur toile de jeans)

1996      
  Oeuvres récentes, Galerie Bruck, Cowansville
  Oeuvres cycliques, Galerie Port-Maurice, Saint-Léonard

1995      
  Tons et improvisations, atelier de l'artiste, Montréal

1994      
  L'affluent et ses berges, La Maison du meunier, Montréal

1989      
  Techniques mixtes sur papier et lithographies, Galerie l'Empreinte, Montréal

1987      
  Second mouvement (techniques mixtes sur papier), Café Timénés, Montréal

GROUP EXHIBITIONS

2002       
  12 artistes en danse contemporaine, Galerie SAS, Montréal

2001      
  Belleau, Groleau oeuvres récentes, Galerie Encadrex, Montréal

1995      
  Le maître qui est au maître?, Salle du Gésù, Montréal

1995      
  Expo-Arte, Guadalajara, Mexique

1994      
  Peintures récentes, Galerie Simon Blais, Montréal

1993     
  À bruit secret, concours Duchamp- Villon, Galerie d'art du college Edouard- Montpetit, Longueuil

EVENTS
     
2005
  RDV 133, rencontre de 10 artistes contemporains à Pike River      

02-05     
  Exposition enchantée, encan-bénéfice, Écomusée du Fier-monde, Montréal      

01-03     
  La marée aux mille vagues, 2 000 pieds de toile, Musée du Bas-Saint-Laurent, Rivière-du-Loup (artiste accompagnateur)      

2000      
  Festival des arts 2000, Galerie d'arts contemporains, Montréal      

1999      
  Célébrer la vie, Montréal. Une exposition de groupe en art contemporain suivant la technique du cadavre exquis.
     
PUBLIC AND PRIVATE COLLECTIONS
     
Cossette-Communications      
Loto-Québec      
Encadrex      
Gaz métropolitain      
Banque de Montréal      
La compagnie Wyatt, conseillers et actuaires      
Consulat général de la République de Corée      
Ville de Pointe-Claire      
Les architectes Beauchamp et Roy      
Les productions Bleu, Blanc, Rouge Inc.      
Groupe SNC-Lavallin      
Centrale de l'enseignement du Québec