Galerie Antoine Ertaskiran is proud to present the second solo exhibition at the gallery by Mathieu Beauséjour, titled La banque du Soleil (Bank of the Sun). Over the past 15 years, Mathieu Beauséjour’s artistic practice has evolved around the perspective of resistance and semantic diversion. The artist seeks to subvert the material and the concepts of power, alienation and oppression, casting a look, both ironic and nostalgic, at political and artistic avant-gardes. Continuing his aesthetic research into the ideas of control and submission, the artist presents in this show a new selection of drawings, photographs and objects. Inspired by the British capitalist system and marked by the ubiquitous presence of surveillance cameras he noticed during a 6 month stay at the Québec Studio in London, Mathieu Beauséjour deciphers and analyzes the rigour of that system, and the many meanings of power and rule, using minimalism and a great economy of means.

The works of Mathieu Beauséjour are challenging to read, as they invite the viewer to experience the work at the expense of the image. Whether it is a portrait of headless businessmen, black suns or illegible text, each piece reveals a double meaning, where the reading codes are scrambled, the image encrypted.

Mathieu Beauséjour lives and works in Montreal. His production is diverse and hinges especially on installation art, performance, intervention and printing. His work has recently been presented in numerous group and solo exhibitions, such as at Musée Régional de Rimouski with the exhibition La Révolte de l’imagination – Une Rétrospective (this show will be on display at centre d’exposition Expression de Sainte Hyacinthe in winter 2015), at the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal during the exhibition La Beauté du geste in 2014 and the Quebec Triennial 2011, and also as part of the Manif d’art 7 de Québec, 2014. His work has been the subject of several exhibition catalogues, the most recent to be released in March 2015 under the direction of curator Andréanne Roy. Mathieu Beauséjour’s works can be found in many public and private collections, including those of Bank of Montreal, Loto-Québec, Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal and Giverny-Capital among others. He currently has an artist’s studio at the Darling Foundry (Montreal) sponsored by the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts.