Through this new body of work, François Simard deepens his reflection on memory and the inexorable passage of time by bringing intimate and collective archives into dialogue. The artist continues his exploration of North American landscapes by reinterpreting engravings by the British artist William Henry Bartlett, drawn from American Scenery, published toward the end of the 19th century. These romanticized and idealized representations of so-called “wild” nature and vast American panoramas contributed to the construction of a triumphant imaginary, celebrating the rise of an emerging world power presented as a land of opportunity and promise.
Simard strips these landscapes of their narrative and historical elements to reveal their timelessness and apparent permanence, set in contrast with the fleeting nature of existence. Through a free and fluid gesture, as well as deliberately simplified forms and lines, he captures their essence.
In this new series, his work on archives and the persistence of images is enriched by a more personal and introspective dimension. Like a palimpsest, François Simard revisits his own earlier works—abstractions created in the 2000s. Through a process of layering, the original painting shows through as a ghosted presence, emerging to varying degrees from one canvas to another, revealing the continuities and transformations that run through his practice. Bartlett’s landscapes thus resonate with his own youthful paintings, reactivated as relics of the past.
Through this interplay of superimposition and erasure, Simard makes visible the action of time, which alters memory, dissolves recollections, and occasionally allows clear fragments of the past to resurface in sudden flashes.
