Huile et crayon de bois sur toile, 2021
Dans Fish, Alexandre Pépin combine l’usage des crayons de couleur et de la peinture à l’huile pour décrire le combat d’un poisson hors de l’eau, dans une œuvre simple qui évoque un futurisme italien mâtiné de postimpressionnisme. Les épaisses touches de peinture expriment la qualité physique de la matière, tandis que la rivière, représentée par des traits pâles au crayon de couleur, parait sans éclat, sèche et vide.
Alexandre Pépin is a French-Canadian visual artist born in Tiohtiá:ke/Montréal (1992), currently living and working in Austin, Texas. He holds an MFA in studio arts from the University of Texas at Austin (2022) and a BFA in studio arts from Concordia University in Montréal (2016). Pépin draws on the legacy of Byzantine and early Renaissance frescoes, Post-Impressionism, Tonalism, the Viennese Secession, and Pattern and Decoration to portray moments of Queer intimacy and spiritual contemplation. The recipient of grants from the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec (2017) and the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation (2019), Pépin has participated in residencies at the Vermont Studio Center (2017) and the Ox-Bow School of Art (Summer Fellowship, 2021), and his work has been shown in solo and group exhibitions in Canada and the US. His work was recently reviewed in Esse arts + opinions (2021), New American Painting (2022), Glasstire (2022), and Sightlines Magazine (2022).