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JACK SHAINMAN - Pierre Dorion

416 views · Published 8 June 2014 · 4:14 · Indexed 26 September 2026

Channel: NYC GALLERY OPENINGS · 2014 · Entertainment

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Pierre Dorion
Solo Exhibition

Jack Shainman Gallery 24th Street
524 West 24th Street 
New York, NY 10011 

June 5th - July 25th, 2014
Opening:  June 5th 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM

Jack Shainman Gallery is pleased to present a solo exhibition of new paintings 
by Pierre Dorion. The show includes works which mark Dorion's continued 
engagement with, and exploration of, architectural spaces, especially those of 
galleries and museums. From a Nicaraguan storefront in the afternoon sun to 
the shut gate of an art gallery, these paintings play with the tension between 
representation and abstraction.

Dorion's process begins by photographing a myriad of exterior and interior 
architectural elements that fascinate him. He then selects photos to translate 
into paintings, and through the use of light and the elimination of detail, 
creates highly minimal, and frequently monochromatic compositions. In a 2013 
Artdaily.org interview, Dorion explains his recent work as follows: "In the last 
few years, I've worked extensively from photographs that I've taken in galleries 
or museums on various trips and that consequently include certain works or 
fragments of works. My preference is for formally spare, very minimalist works, 
in which the boundaries between architecture and the artwork fade away in the 
painting." Dorion's paintings are imbued with an uncanny emptiness that distills 
fragments of reality, drawing influences from the history of the medium to 
engage in a conversation on Minimalism and abstraction.

Dorion's exploration of Minimalism in this exhibition of new paintings is 
twofold as he both depicts works by well-known Minimalist artists and renders 
architectural spaces using the Minimalist tropes of non-expressivity, expansive 
color fields and gradients, and stark geometry. In his larger works, such as 
Untitled (BG), 2013, and Dusk IV, 2014, Dorion extracts details from 
architectural spaces which he has photographed in order to strip them of any 
particularity. These details become abstracted to such a degree that their 
ambiguity challenges representation; Untitled (BG) abstracts the doors of a 
freight elevator into a study in gray color fields. His smaller works depict 
installations of purely Minimalist work. Untitled (FS), 2014, shows an exhibition 
space with works by Fred Sandback. More than a mere illustration these 
paintings blend the architectural minimalism of the exhibition spaces with the 
Minimalist artworks on display. This creates a composition in which figure-
ground distinctions are flattened resulting in a melancholic mysteriousness. By 
breaking down the boundaries between art and architecture and quoting 
Minimalist tropes, Dorion's paintings create a tension between what is 
apparent at first sight and what is obscured, and between the surface and 
depth of the work itself.

Pierre Dorion lives and works in Montreal, Quebec.  His most recent solo 
exhibition was Pierre Dorion, which opened at the Musée d'art contemporain 
de Montréal in October of 2012. This major exhibition included work from the 
past twenty years of Dorion's career and was accompanied by a catalogue 
published by the museum featuring essays by Mark Lanctôt, David Deitcher, 
and Stephen Horne. The exhibition subsequently traveled to Dalhousie Art 
Gallery in Halifax, Nova Scotia, where it was on view through May of 2013.


Music by:
Chill Carrier - A New Day

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