Véronique Savard (download cv, pdf 76 Ko)

Born in Chicoutimi in 1977, Véronique Savard holds Masters in Visual and Media Arts from Université du Québec à Montréal. In 2010, she received the Claudine and Stephen Bronfman grant in contemporary art.

Véronique Savard is interested in the language used in communications in general and the internet in particular. She takes acronyms, IM shortcuts, and instantly recognizable expressions and appropriates them into large-scale paintings.



As she states herself, her "work questions not only the pictorial space and the current communications technologies, through the back and forth between these two spaces, but also attempts to view and express differently what some deem as an aesthetic conflict between the surface of a computer screen and a painting (...)�. More specifically, her paintings are much like the "pop-ups" that randomly appear one after another on a Web page without the consent of the user. Her work deals not only with the fact that we are now witnessing a change in the way we see and perceive,but seeks to examine the suggestive mechanisms and reactions generated by the Web. The large scale painting acts as a platform used to reinterpret these references verbatim and to consider the principles of online advertising, and the many persuasive methods to sell shows, health, perfection, pleasure and cybersex. At once used as pictorial motifs andslogans, these elements - sometimes readable, sometimes illegible or coded-transcribed within the piece forces concepts that are specific to painting (abstraction, minimalism, etc.) and characteristics that are an integral part of the computer screen (algorithms, diagrams, use of motifs that recall the pixilation, etc.) to coexist. They aim to examine how, for some,the public space of the Internet is ideal for instant communication and how,for others, it is the perfect vehicle for direct solicitation and the fulfillment of fantasies of all kinds. "

 

Véronique Savard