Welcoming Alexis Lavoie

 En Pièces  (9), 2010
Oil on canvas
121.9 x 121.9 cm

We enthusiastically welcome Alexis Lavoie as a guest artist to our roster, and look forward to presenting his work to a Toronto audience.


 Alexis Lavoie, recent winner of the coveted RBC Painting Prize, is featured on the cover of the current issue of "Vie Des Arts", with and article by Christian Roy. The magazine is well worth picking up this month, with articles on Shary Boyle, Nancy Spero, and Marc-Aurèle Fortin among others.

Lavoie's paintings are ambiguously staged set pieces, bearing traces of trauma or violence, incongruously mixed with mundane objects which float, disembodied and untethered across a screen-like ground. These objects are frequently related to children, their games or their toys. The confluence of the serious and the trivial, the bloody and the prosaic, produces an effect which is quite beautiful, but extremely unsettling. This ambiguity is further emphasized by Lavoie's flat, planar and rather matter-of-fact style of laying down his paint.

As mentioned in the article, Lavoie had expected to have a solo show this spring at Galerie Orange in Montreal, but unfortunately, the gallery was forced to it's doors at the end of March. Fortunately,  I had already been in discussion with him to arrange a show in Toronto. He will have work in inventory at the gallery from September through December of 2011, and plans are in the works for a show in the fall.