Vernissage: January 29, 2025 from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m.
Exhibition: January 29 to March 23, 2025
La forêt qui n’appartenait à personne immerses us in Stéphanie Matte’s childhood woods, a dream world in constant flux. For more than twenty-five years, she has been analyzing the multiplicity of natural and constructed elements that dot this forest, each time creating a singular narrative and providing a vision on the bangs of the literal forest. Composed of photographs, sketches and texts depicting the artist’s dreams, this installation invites us into the intimacy of a constellation of dreams. The inexhaustible transformation generated by the episodes experienced in this immaterial universe exposes the conjuncture of spaces and narratives.
Guided by her senses, the artist strives to be in tune with what the outside world has to offer. In a perpetual quest for openness, it is through encounters with others that ideas emerge and small epiphanies become sensitive matter. Assembling stories, phenomena and memories of aesthetic experiences are the primary inspirations for her work. This ensemble is then remodeled to create a pictorial work that is the fruit of her creative process.
(Text by Janie Lapierre)
Stéphanie Matte lives and works in Rouyn-Noranda. She completed a bachelor’s degree in visual arts at Université Laval in 2007, with an international profile at the École supérieure des beaux-arts de Marseille, and a master’s degree in visual arts at Université Laval in 2019. Her work has been presented at L’Écart (Rouyn-Noranda), the Amos exhibition center and the Rift exhibition center (Ville-Marie); as well as in several group shows in Quebec, France and Brazil. She has received support from CALQ in 2008, 2012, 2014 and 2017 for various research and creation projects; and from SODEC in 2013 and Première Ovation in 2017 and 2018. She participated in the Centre Est-Nord-Est artist residency program in summer 2017.
Photo credit: Stéphanie Matte, Ruisseau 1 (Details of the work), 2024
