Lot
26
Vortex administration 2
Oil and acrylic on canvas, 2004
152 x 152 cm
Vortex administration 2 is a painting that forms part of a series produced in 2003-4 called ‘Ébranler leur quiétude.’ In the post 9/11 years, I made several trips to New York seeking out characteristic images of the ostentatiousness of power. An exacerbated sense of American patriotism translated a certain veiled arrogance toward the ‘enemy’ (intangible to this day). I constructed paintings intended as ironic observations on this self-importance. Vortex administration 1 and 2, then, represent the two faces of Bush, W., donning a smile in the one, clamouring into a microphone in the other, mainstays of media propaganda in the vortex of his political-industrial thrust.
Biographical note
Martin Bureau is a painter and video artist who lives and works in Saint-Jean-de-l’Île-d’Orléans. Considering painting and filming as a social and political gesture, Bureau is particularly interested in notions of power, surveillance and control. He creates metaphorically structured scenes in which meaningful relations result from a clash of images where nature and technology collide. He thus casts an ironic and critical gaze on the rhetoric conveyed by various representations of power, particularly on elements of an ever-changing urban reality caught between construction and deconstruction.
For over a dozen years Bureau has presented his work in the form of paintings and video installations in various exhibitions and events: VIII Bienal de video y nuevos medios in Santiago, Symposium international d'art contemporain in Baie-Saint-Paul, Galerie Lacerte, L'Œil de poisson, Bande vidéo, Manif d'art 2 in Quebec City, Galerie Orange in Montréal, Drabinsky and Lonsdale galleries in Toronto. His paintings are part of many public and private collections: Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, Loto-Québec, Fédération des Caisses Desjardins. In 2009, he made his first documentary with Luc Renaud: Une tente sur Mars.
Represented by Lacerte Art Contemporain, Québec
and Galerie Orange, Montréal.