Since 1982 the interdisciplinary artist Denis Lessard has been exhibiting his visual art work in Canada, United States and Europe. This exhibition features his very first prints made at New Leaf Editions in Vancouver (1996 and 1998) and the Atelier Presse papier in Trois-Rivières (2002). Some of the pieces in the current exhibition have been acquired by the “Collection Prêt d’oeuvres” of the Musée du Québec, the National Library of Quebec in Montreal and the Winnipeg Art Gallery.
Here is the artist’s statement about “Coupures de presse”:
“As an artistic concern, the written press has been at the heart of my preoccupations for more than 15 years, visually as well as theoretically- that is since the early end of my communication studies and following my research work in that field. Since the beginning of the 80s, I have collected a considerable amount of images and texts from newspapers and magazines. While doing so, papers and magazines have revealed themselves to me as cultural artefacts as well as consciousness tools. The clippings thus became isolated “motifs” that have been studied and looked at under a new light; this led to a critical examination of images and texts, which focused especially on questions such as power, violence and male identity among others. Consequently, the issue of how we can situate ourselves today, in relation to the written press, in a globalizing era of overproduction and dramatized information, has been raised. In comparison to the ephemeral quality of technologically transmitted information – either from the radio, television or internet – the press and magazine remain the only sources of knowledge still standing as “objects” in themselves. Just like books, these “poor” technologies still survive even though new alternatives are constantly emerging. Finally, the newspaper’s fragility embodies the ephemeral quality of news, a liminal state between yesterday and today.
The print project entitled “Tendresses” (2002) as well as the series “Coupures de presse” (1996-98) are in direct continuity with the installation “Un mur d’hommes” (1990-92). The latter constituted a wall assemblage of newspaper and magazine clippings, all of which gravitating around the theme of male representation. In order to insure a longer standing durability for this kind of work, the technique of “chine collé” (where the image, previously printed on an Japanese paper is glued onto a larger piece of paper) revealed itself as the most efficient way to preserve the cut-out and floating character of these images.”