Henri Venne

My work emerges from an undertaken research on memory and the remembrance of landscape, where vaporous atmospheres of evanescent recollections are illustrated. My work thus, contains ghostly and emotional reflections of past moments. The glossy surface of the paintings reflects the environment where the viewer stands, creating a symbiosis between the memory of the past captured in the photo and the reality of the actual moment. The representation/ reflection of the painting, contrary to the photograph, will always belong in the present. The act of contemplation, which you can experience in front of a landscape, is lost through the reducing effect of photography. The ephemeral memory of that specific instant is now translated through this new meditative space, the artwork itself. The reflection of the surrounding space in each artwork underlines my interest in making reality and the representation of reality cohabitate symbiotically in the midst of the work. Each diptych (photo/painting) proposes an incessant dialogue between the phenomenon of photographic representation and the notions of sensorial evocations of formalist painting.

Henri Venne was born in Joliette but now lives and works in Montreal. Since 1994, he has been showing his artwork, a combination of photography and painting, throughout many galleries and museums in Quebec. He holds a masters degree from Concordia University in Fine arts and he now teaches visual arts at the Vanier College in Montréal.