Légendes oubliées

Galerie Trois Points is very pleased to welcome Légendes oubliées, the very first solo exhibition in Montreal of Toronto-based artist Alex McLeod, from May 26^th to June 23^rd.

Alex McLeod’s work is in the wake of new media while the artist uses specialized software to digitally constructed hyper-realistic 3D environments. Recalling the wide-open vistas of Romantic landscape painting and the Strong tradition of Canadian landscap, the environments created by McLeod are filled with crystalline mountains, fiery lakes, and rotund clouds, all rendered in a sickly sweet and gooey candy-colored palette. They act as hybrid spaces that imply an almost infinite recombination of the past and present, the real and virtual.

Beneath their seductively polished surfaces, of glimmering fortresses and floating geometric abstractions, lies a haunting stillness that comes forth in the aftermath of cataclysmic events.

Beyond the smooth and seductive landscapes McLeod plays but a sense of tragedy which is hardly noticeable at first. The causes of destruction remains unknown in these depopulated spaces -there are no people in these images, however much human traces remain in the rickety railways and empty fortresses. And yet, from the twilight of devastation shown in these strange dioramas lies possibilities for hope and rebirth in our own digital milieu through the artist’s new approaches to concepts as varied as ecological responsibility and the shared intersections between photography and painting

In Légendes oubliées, McLeod explores the possibilities of how a distorted pattern could create form, reflecting the development of his work, with a completely new use of texture. Reading levels are continuing to multiply to the viewer in front of these works that never seems to grasp in their entirety. Perhaps precisely because of technical mastery shown by the artist, but also by the choice of materials, compositions. Literally, McLeod takes pleasure in deconstructing patterns of perception.

Press release