In this exhibition, the artist takes on the role of curator, simulating a fictional exhibition where the relics of artworks destroyed by gunfire during an assault are displayed in a history museum gallery. In the frenzy of this violent invasion, paintings would have been targeted and torn apart by the impact of buckshot.
Two significant events inspired Arcand-Bossé in the development of this project: the January 6 United States Capitol attack and the tomato soup attack on Van Gogh’s famous painting Sunflowers at the National Gallery in London on October 14, 2022. Loaded with meaning and visually striking, these events ignite the artist’s imagination and fuel his reflection.
The perforated works depict picturesque, idealized landscapes reminiscent of 19th-century Romantic landscape painting. Drawing from a broad repertoire of artworks from that era, from Constable to Turner and the painters of the Hudson River School, the artist creates imaginary bucolic landscapes, skillfully intertwining anachronistic codes. Far from being mere lifeless pastiches, Arcand-Bossé’s works convey a genuine delight in imagining and crafting, from scratch, invented places and landscapes.
Then, in an act of self-destruction, the artist opens fire on his works, introducing through this irrevocable gesture an element of risk and chance into his creation. Through this perilous game, Arcand-Bossé accepts the possibility that his works, the result of long and meticulous labor, may be irreparably destroyed—a particularly daring approach for an artist whose pictorial method is based on rigorous, even perfectionist, technical control. Through this contrast, Arcand-Bossé questions the inherent fragility of creation, marked by risk-taking and vulnerability, and explores the tension between control and release, mastery and loss.
Echoing the violence of our time, the act of shooting becomes here, much like a brushstroke, a formal and aesthetic gesture. By pre-determining the points of impact as well as the number and spacing of the gunshots, the artist retains a degree of control over the composition of the image, allowing him to modulate the extent of its degradation.
Through this exhibition, Thierry Arcand-Bossé also questions the value, status, and quasi-sacred nature of painting, whose destruction stirs deep emotions and, for many—whether art connoisseurs or not—borders on blasphemy. Like book burning, iconoclasm represents a symbolic violence, an affront to freedom of expression, collective memory, the universal—in essence, to humanity in its most profound aspect: its sensitive nature. Does targeting an innocuous landscape, in this case, not make the act even more shocking, even more contemptible?
In the face of prevalent violence and devastation, Thierry Arcand-Bossé demonstrates that, despite everything, art endures, embodying a timeless tool of resistance and a catalyst for change. By exhibiting these remnants marked by violence, the artist celebrates the indestructible power of artistic expression.
