Acrylique, huile, impression au jet d’encre, tissu synthétique, bois et aluminium, 2020-2021
Sitting. Reading. is a painting on transparent synthetic fabric. Hardy employs a modernist structure in which three varyingly opaque, equally sized quadrants float above and obscure a recessed photocopied print. The fourth quadrant, unpainted, functions as a window revealing both the painting’s wooden stretcher bars and the partial image of someone casually sitting in a reclined position, book in hand. The work is a poetic play of juxtapositions that revels in tensions among obscuring and revealing, the complex nature of painting as image, object, and index, and a perpetual shifting of context that beckons us to slow down.
Paul Hardy is an artist and educator based in Tiohtiá:ke/Montréal. His ambiguous and abstract paintings and drawings are experiential objects, metaphors, and poetic ciphers marked by relentless material exploration and a continual quest for understanding. A sensual and affective charge resonates as screens and palimpsests recur, raising questions about how we observe, how perception is shaped, and how meaning is made and lost.
Hardy holds a BA from Université de Moncton and an MFA from Concordia University. His work is in the Royal Bank of Canada collection, the Claridge Collection, Collection Loto-Québec, the Telus collection, and numerous other corporate and private collections. Recent notable solo exhibitions include Screen Memories at Bellemare Lambert (Montréal), The Waves at Parisian Laundry (Montréal), and Study for Ways to Live at Centre CLARK (Montréal).