In Fitzca's Pond: Matt Shane
Opening Wednesday April 23, from 5 to 8 PM
McBride Contemporain is pleased to present In Fitzca’s Pond, the gallery's second solo exhibition by Matt Shane. Over the past year, the artist has set aside the monumental aspect of landscape in favour of a personal, intimate vision. His new body of work springs from close observations of amphibians seen while wading in Fitzca’s Pond on his friends’ land in the Laurentians.
Frogs are the beloved subject of this series, and they take pride of place in the foreground of an abundant natural domain. The imposing format of these paintings leads to a sense of immersion in the landscape. The audience, in turn, is given an intimate encounter with the animal — a moment when eyes meet and time dissolves. What does our experience of this habitat have in common? What is the sensorium of these beings who seem so dissimilar from us, yet have inhabited our world since time immemorial? Despite their fragility, amphibians have found ingenious ways to adapt to extreme and changing environments. Over the course of millennia, their bodies have evolved to produce a staggering diversity of traits, complex camouflage mechanisms and defense strategies to ward off predators.
Shane’s corpus reflects his fascination with these sophisticated animals, highlighting their importance in today’s context. Frog skin is semi-permeable, which allows these creatures to breathe underwater. This same mechanism renders them acutely susceptible to pollutants and fungal infection. The presence or absence of frogs tells us about the biotic health of a wetland. With their strangely warm and vibrant hues, Shane’s paintings invite us to pay closer attention to these “ecological barometers” and the flora that shelters them. If these surreal natural images exude a certain violence, even a sense of urgency, it is only to underline the vulnerability of our ecosystems and the vital need to protect them.
Translation of a text by Marianne Cloutier
Born in 1981 in Vancouver, Shane has lived and worked primarily in Montreal since earning his MFA from Concordia University in 2013. He has received numerous grants and awards and has co-organized twenty large-scale collaborative drawing installations with the artist Jim Holyoak. His work has been shown extensively, with residencies and exhibitions across three continents. Recent collaborative projects have been presented at the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, the Midlands Arts Centre in Birmingham, and the Teckningsmuseet in Sweden. Shane teaches Drawing and Painting at Concordia University. His work can be found in numerous collections, including those of Hydro-Québec, the City of Laval, the Bank of Montreal, and Caisse Populaire Desjardins, as well as in several prestigious private collections.
