In his new production, Dan Brault returns to his roots after a production in which the artist exploded in all sorts of mediums, from aluminum to jacquard tapestry (Mon potager, 2021) and a more experimental mini-series (Clair de lune, 2022) in which the artist led us towards a sort of subtle purification of color. This time, it is a completely assertive Dan Brault that we find with the exhibition Désordre naturel.
Désordre naturel presents a corpus of more than fifteen paintings, all on a white background, evoking the pages of a drawing book where shapes and patterns read like enigmatic visual poems. Like a DJ, the artist draws from his vast bank of images gleaned here and there over several decades in order to offer us a fragmented visual prose, breaking away from the usual linear framework of the narrative process.
Dan Brault’s practice revolves around a confrontation of pictorial aesthetics, drawing from the codes and genres of this medium. His intention is to make the interaction with his works an exciting and memorable experience. With a B.A. from Concordia University (Montreal) and an M.F.A. from Laval University (Quebec City), the artist combines several techniques such as hard-edge, gestural abstraction and airbrush. However, he considers painting as the ultimate form of virtual reality, exploring this medium as an essential means of constructing new visions and realities, while always prioritizing freedom, color and optimism over any truly conceptual approach.
Dan Brault (b. 1979 in Montreal) lives and works in Quebec City. His work has been featured in exhibitions across Canada, the United States, Mexico, Brazil, France, Belgium and the United Arab Emirates. His paintings can be found in the collections of the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, the Musée National des Beaux-Arts du Québec, the Musée d’Art Contemporain de Baie-St-Paul, the BMO – Bank of Montreal (Toronto), Loto-Québec, Caisses Desjardins, Majudia Collection, the Fondation Colas in France as well as various private collections.
Dan Brault is also featured in 100 Painters of Tomorrow, curated by the London gallerist Kurt Beers and published in 2014 by Thames & Hudson.
