UNDER THE SOIL, IN THE STARS

Rebecca Munce

September 10 – October 24, 2026

Opening September 10
Artist in attendance

McBride Contemporain is proud to present Under the Soil, in the Stars, a solo exhibition by Rebecca Munce. Bringing together a new series of paintings, accompanied for the first time by hand-carved wooden frames and objects, the exhibition introduces a new dimension to the artist’s practice, as her visual language extends beyond the pictorial space.

More narratively forward than her previous works, these new paintings depict moments of conflict, ascension, and transformation, without belonging to a fixed mythology governed by a clear distinction between good and evil. Hat-wearing wayfarers wielding swords and torches fight over ovoid objects, while tigers, flying fish, castles, ladders, gardens, and angels recur from one work to the next, at times familiar, at times transformed.

These interactions unfold according to a cyclical logic, in which bodies and matter continually pass from one state to another. Destruction does not necessarily mark an end, just as ascension offers no promise of reward. Passages and bands divide the paintings into interconnected zones, allowing different beings and temporalities to coexist within a single image. This spatial structure, which bears affinities with medieval narrative and devotional art, allows processes of dissolution, metamorphosis, and reconstitution to unfold simultaneously.

This interest in devotional imagery also finds an echo in Munce’s sculptural elements. Conceived as vessels for the paintings, the frames draw inspiration from altarpieces, shrines, and niches that house paintings while also participating in their meaning. Woodcarving has found a natural place within Munce’s practice, creating a parallel with her reductive approach to painting: incisions and grooves function much like the scraping and removal of paint, allowing images and forms to emerge through subtraction. By extension, elements from the artist’s universe have taken the form of small wooden objects, carrying her visual language into the gallery space, somewhere between symbols and offerings.

Under the Soil, in the Stars gives rise to a universe in which earthly and celestial worlds are not conceived as separate realms, but as different dimensions of a single whole. The sacred is not exclusively associated with what lies above us, but can manifest underground, within bodies, in water, and even through death. The paintings thus approach these different dimensions as components of a single cosmic process in perpetual motion, in which destruction, transformation, and renewal continually follow one another.

This exhibition is presented as a satellite exhibition of Pictura, Montreal’s Painting Triennial.