Two Old Friends Play Chess
February 20 - April 2, 2016
Galerie Trois Points is thrilled to present a new Evergon exhibition running from February 20th to April 2nd. The pleasure of working with an artist whose career spans over forty years is one of perpetual (re)discoveries. Active since the 1970s, Evergon has never stopped his exploration of the photographic processes, constantly pushing the boundaries of the medium while experimenting with cyanotype, colour Xerox, the large-scale Polaroid prints and even holographic imagery.
The exhibition Two Old Friends Play Chess presented at the gallery brings together a selection of older pieces and a series of brand new works, strongly emphasizing the profound coherence of the artist’s practice. Through all his work Evergon deploys a sense of unusual theatricality and handles with finesse and assurance the texture, the body, the fabrics, the materials. He multiplies the spaces with superimpositions and collages and he plays with reflection and transparency, exploiting contrasts of textures, rich fabrics, compelling silks and polished stones that appeal to our senses. We immediately recognize the artist in these new cabinets of curiosities featuring objects from his private collection. These large-scale still-lives signed Celluloso Evergonni and Gigi Angelotti (Jean-Jacques Ringuette) are clearly reminiscent of some of the 1980s Polaroid works, both in the palette as much as in its rich textures.
One could apprehend Evergon’s sense of play as he declines pseudonyms like as many distinct artists with their very own interests and characteristics. Thus, some pieces will be signed Eve R. Gonzales, other by Egon Brut, then all the work of Homo-Barocco series – including most of the large-scale Polaroid works – are signed Celluloso Evergonni.
In the 1970s, Evergon explores the new process of photocopying through the Xerox machine while constructing new images by the juxtaposition of several photographs. By the early 1980s, he continues to do so with the Polaroid camera, producing outstanding works, the Interlocking Polaroids series, some of which are featured in this exhibition. The Polaroid Company, recognizing the quality of his artistic practice, invited the artist to try – in Boston, New York and Frankfurt studios – a camera prototype that was used to generate large-scale photographs, up to two meters high. In order to use this unique camera, the artist traveled with his team for shoots that lasted several days. These highly evocative works are also unique, since this prototype was dismantled soon after the last shoot in 1993 and there is no lasting negative.
Evergon lives and works in Montreal, Canada. Internationally acclaimed artist, he is now considered one of the most important proponents of contemporary photography and his work has been the subject of numerous museum exhibitions and shown around the globe. It is found in many private and public collections such as the National Gallery of Canada, Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, Musée d’art contemporain de Montreal, International Museum of Photography (George Eastman House), Cartier Foundation for Contemporary Art, Owens Art Gallery, Princeton Collection, the Museum of Photography (Charleroi, Belgium), Vancouver Art Gallery, the Elysée Museum (Lausanne, Switzerland), Winnipeg Art Gallery and the National Museum of Photography, film and Television (Bradford, England), to name a few.