OPENING JANUARY 12
FROM 5 TO 8PM

Galerie Antoine Ertaskiran is pleased to announce a new collaboration with two Montreal artists Jean-François Lauda and Valérie Kolakis, who will present their recent works in the gallery’s main room. In the second exhibition room, Galerie Antoine Ertaskiran will present the project Less is more or… by Aude Moreau, who was recently awarded the Prix Louis-Comtois.

Valérie Kolakis’ work is an exploration of architectonics and is linked to questions of migration, displacement and change. The notions of subtraction, emptiness and the illusory relation to the urban landscape are among the themes touched upon in her work. By way of mass-produced industrial materials, Kolakis explores the imagery of urban space and the transitory spaces comprising it through the use of poor and/or found materials; materials of an ephemeral nature that strive against the authenticity of pure form. This leads to the creation of a form of the “object’s” reconstruction that is in direct contradiction with its initial function.

Born in Athens, Greece, Valérie Kolakis works and lives in Montreal. Kolakis had exhibited her work in Canada, United States, Europe and China. Her most recent exhibitions include Art Rotterdam (Fold Gallery, London 2016), Chara (Centre Diagonale, Montréal, 2015), The Duration of the Sharp Hard Outline of Things (Fold Gallery, London, 2014), and Living in a Material World (Centre Phi, 2013, Montreal). Her work was presented in The Quebec Triennial (Musée d’art contemporain de Montreal) in 2011. Valerie Kolakis was shortlisted for the first edition of the Musée National des beaux-arts du Québec Contemporary Art Award in 2013.

 

In his art practice, Jean-François Lauda adopts an intuitive approach to painting. His exploration of raw materials is translated through the slow formal transformations that arise thanks to the experimental dimension of his process. His practice is characterized by the combination of an abstract style and a pictorial vocabulary conveying the trace of the gesture. In exhibiting the deliberate marks of a process of accumulation and erasure, his compositions reveal the process of their own making: traces of regrets, memory of past actions, various temporalities.

Lauda works and lives in Montreal. He has participated to the 30th Symposium d’art contemporain de Baie-Saint-Paul in 2012 and was also part of the Painting Project at Galerie de l’UQAM in 2013. His work has been shown in numerous solo and group exhibitions such as Pimps and Fishmongers, a solo exhibition shown at VSVSVS (Toronto) in 2013, at Galerie Erin Stump Projects, Battat Contemporary, Vie d’ange Club in Montreal and at Romer Young Gallery (San Francisco) in2015. His artworks are part of private and public collections such as Hydro-Québec, National Bank of Canada and TD Bank in Toronto.