About the Sculptor and Artists

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CULTURE

Cap-Santé

A Magnet for and Through the Arts

A vibrant, tightly knit community of Cap-Santé artists of all specialties thrives in all spheres of creation, from visual arts to poetry, sculpture, stained glass and music.

Events such as the Symposium Riche en Couleurs, the Vitrine des artistes de l'Escale du Roy (the 6-month exhibition), and poetry evenings... not to mention our many galleries… are wildly inspiring attractions for citizens and visitors alike.

Canvas, Wood and Fire Exhibition

Albert-Fortier Hall

October 11 to 14, 2024

An amazing exhibition to enjoy contemporary art and non-figurative and figurative art.~ paintings, sculptures, audio-visual presentations.

Three Cap-Santé artists: Johanne Beaulieu, painter, Lucien-Carol Proulx, wood sculptor, and Christian Duguay, painter.

One passion: the art of transcendence and the imaginary. The three succeed in making concrete manipulations of various supports, tools, mediums and materials to express their angles on current temporality and/or the world of the imaginary.

An exhibition that could also be called going beyond the realm of form and reality.

These three virtuosos of astonishment offer visitors some sixty pieces that testify to their refusal to abstain from the frameworks of form, the world of reality, or the dictates of the visual and sculptural arts.

Johanne Beaulieu

Johanne Beaulieu's art is characterized by transcendence of limitations and the inner tyranny of perfectionism. For her, a canvas is a panoply of innovative creative opportunities. There are no mistakes, just feedback to take things further.

Her artistic career is atypical, but rich in experience in aesthetics and visual art.

"The stars and sometimes nature inspire me to transcend my limited perceptions, so I build a new way of looking that is subject to other rules that go beyond me. My artistic impulse allows me to rise above my own field of vision of vision".

Lucien-Carol Proulx

Lucien-Carol Proulx studied presentation techniques and woodcarving and wood sculpture. He first worked as a display designer and for the past 6 years, he has practiced wood carving.

He has a keen interest in the social sciences, history and art. His research in the visual arts has resulted in works that reveal iniquities and their consequences for human beings. His art is characterized by the knot of the work giving impetus to movement, and also by the essence of being sculpted on the subject's face. The aestheticism of his works allows his message to be heard, to provoke reflection and emotion in visitors. What he conveys is current and present.

"I cannot denounce what has not happened. The temporality between the aestheticism of my works and my message is the signifier of the duration of iniquity."

Christian Duguay

Painter and sculptor Christian Duguay has lived in Cap-Santé since 2020. A native of the Côte-Nord region, Christian is a self-taught artist with 41 years of experience, in painting life and the hidden dimensions of his creativity.

Before making a living from his art, Christian also had a career as a helicopter pilot in the Far North, as an industrial draughtsman and then as a train driver in remote regions, experiences that have considerably influenced his art. His skies and wilderness scenes, in which light is omnipresent, are examples of this. His works emanate serenity and a reflection on life, where his concern for the environment blends with a world of the imagination.

His desire to make art accessible motivated him, in the early 2000s, to create one of the most impressive dragon-themed collections. He composed over 20 paintings for this exhibition. More than 100 works, comprising paintings and sculptures, are regularly exhibited in Canadian and international museums. A book was born of this experience. His passion and vivacity contribute inexorably to giving his works a palpable authenticity.

 

Lucien-Carol Proulx is a mixed media woodcarver living in Cap-Santé near Quebec City.

His research in the visual arts takes shape in works that reveal inequities and their consequences on human beings. 

Lucien's art is characterized by the knot of the work giving impetus to the movement and also by the essence of the being sculpted on the face of the subject. 

The path of this artist is atypical, in terms of his private life, and his public professional life. 

He is introverted while being pleasantly sociable. Open to others, he transmits his joy of living with his communicative laughter.

Biography

 

"The beauty and refinement of the aesthetics of my works allow my message to be confrontational. I denounce the forbidden".

Lucien-Carol Proulx is a former window dresser and decorator, he is interested in sculptural creation and everything that involves human nature. He has become interested in social sciences, history and art due to his extensive travel. 

All his itineraries include visits to museums and places marked by history. Lucien-Carol drinks from the sources of history. From the works of the great masters to the Bayeux tapestry, to the visit of contemporary artists' studios, all the while taking the time to have a coffee on a terrace and watch people live.

Lucien-Carol is insatiable for knowledge! Since the beginning of his career as a sculptor, his travels are self-taught studies with the objective of researching and creating visual arts. Moreover, 2019 in Italy, his interest was on the positioning of the work and the distancing of the viewer. In 2018, in Joucas near Avignon, France, Lucien-Carol visited the studio of mixed media sculptors Mieke Heybroek and Ulysse Plaud. This visit marked his determination to be a mixed media sculptor, strongly influenced his style and his freedom to create differently.

Also in 2018, he met the famous Quebec sculptor Fabien Pagé, also recognized by his peers as a restorer of religious works and ancient artworks. He is also the creator of landmark works for Quebec. These two men are linked by their passion for sculpture. Both have an admiring look at the other. Lucien-Carol was amazed by the talent of the master: the famous people he represented were undeniably realistic. Lucien-Carol's abstract figurative style amazes Fabien. The master recognizes Lucien-Carol's artistic singularity, his creativity and the characteristics of his style.

 Speaking of Lucien-Carol, Fabien says: "He has another eye".

It is in the node of the work that the movement originates. It is there that Lucien-Carol transmits to the spectator an exhilarating fascination where his imagination enters in action. The spectator is positioned on a forecourt from which it is possible to see an open portal and, from this glance, the spectator becomes aware that only the crossing of the portal gives access to the conscience. His works challenge. They overcome our resistance. They subjugate like a memory inscribed on our face that we see only when we look at our reflection in a mirror. Like a stab on wood, the works of Lucien-Carol mark the spectator by the agitation that they provoke with the emergence of the interpretation that it makes. The word that Lucien-Carol takes is the one that he writes on the wood in order to form it by struggling with the power that his empathy gives him. 

The wood, its resistance and the strength to create from this rebellious material, manifest his will to bring out of the shadows what must be revealed. He invites us to witness a moment, a fact that remains camouflaged or invisible. Lucien-Carol's works are a face-to-face encounter with compassion for oneself and for the other. It is an encounter in our humanity and the human race. An encounter where the barriers of silence collapse.

Like his work Tragedy of the Child Slaves in the Mines of the Congo which denounces the slavery of children in mines in Africa. The toxicity of the mines puts their lives in danger and their faces, greyed by the dust, are the witnesses. 

Jazz in the Heart of Spruce shows a double bass player who is invisible because of his art. 

The Omerta challenges us through a relational void defined by gags showing a scene captured from the silence, blindness and deafness announcing an inevitably destructive drama for a couple. This relationship.

 

Artistic approach

 

To express my artistic impulse, I chose wood to which I add other mediums according to my imagination. The materials and colors all have their own meanings. Individually significant, but also in their reciprocity. These mediums convey the message of my work to the viewer. They are a look at the prohibitions that constrain the integrity of the being. For when our integrity is affected, it is no longer possible to be ourselves. It emerges a vulnerability to the glance of the other from which we evaluate our value. This reasoning is an enclosure, a loop whose effect is not desirable; since the injustice towards oneself limits our action so as to make us insensitive to iniquities. I present to the viewer my vision of a page of individual or societal history, in order to disrupt the unjust, unjustifiable and unjustified reference points with which we have been educated and instructed: where all paradigms are constructed.

The aestheticism of my work allows my message to be heard, it can be labeled by many as traditional, conventional. However, the message I convey is current and present. I could not denounce what did not happen. The temporality between the aestheticism of my works and my message is the signifier of the duration of the iniquity.

I represent at the same time the source of the prohibitions, their effects, their presence and the desire of every human being to proclaim the reconstruction of its authenticity. I denounce the silences, the looks that turn away and the consequences of their acquiescence. 

My works are the representation of the paradox of confinement and the display of what it produces. Through my works, what has been repressed and hidden takes its form in order to exist, to assert itself and to be seen by all. My works show the passage back and forth of my exit from the void.