ESTABLISHED ARTIST: Yves Tessier a 21st century anthropologist
Born in 1955, Montreal, Canada
Lives and works in both Montreal and New York
No one knows better about “genre painting” than major painter Yves Tessier. The best definition I found was in Wikipedia:
Genre art is the pictorial representation in any of various media of scenes or events from everyday life, such as markets, domestic settings, interiors, parties, inn scenes, and street scenes. Such representations (also called genre works, genre scenes, or genre views) may be realistic, imagined, or romanticized by the artist. Some variations of the term genre art specify the medium or type of visual work, as in genre painting, genre prints, genre photographs, and so on.
Each scene depicts a precise moment of people’s everyday life. His recurrent targets can be average or bourgeois people and couples or teenagers. Like an anthropologist he re-transcripts meticulously all the details that characterize their life.
We enter or interrupt the intimacy of those people’s life with no voyeur feeling because the Egyptian-antique-style chosen allows to stand back. And that style fits really well with the anthropologist-genre-painting. The characters depicted don’t need tons of visible brush-strokes to express the idea of the artist-anthropologist. He chooses the right palette and just a few details -I would better say clues- to set a scene.
Tessier‘s paintings show the same simplicity as a ballerina flying in the air as if it was natural for her to fly. BCh
2014 – 2015
2012 -2014
Below remarkable interpretation of such a mythic subject, les baigneuses
2010 -2012
Selected Solo Exhibitions
2014 Art 45, Montreal, Canada
2013 GAO, Montreal, Canada
2010 Galerie Laroche/Joncas, Montreal, Canada
2009 ‘Recent Situations II’ Projex-Mtl Galerie, Montreal, Canada
2008 ‘Recent Situations’ Optica, Montreal, Canada
1995 Galerie Local 906, Montreal, Canada
1994 Galerie Max Gauvin, Montreal, Canada
1989 Galerie SKOL, Montreal, Canada
Group Exhibitions
2013 ‘I don’t like your paintings, I like your paintings’, Art 45, Montreal, Canada
2010 ‘NEXT: Art Toronto’ Galerie Laroche/Joncas, Toronto, Canada
2010 ‘Extreme Painting’ Projex-Mtl Galerie, Montreal, Canada
2010 ‘NEXT: Chicago’ Projex MtlGalerie,Chicago, IL ‘Portrait of a Patron: The Duksta Collection’ UTAC, University of Toronto Art Center, Toronto,
2009 ‘Summer, Summer’ Projex-Mtl Galerie, Montreal, Canada
2008-2009-2010 ‘Art Toronto: International Art Fair’ Laroche/Joncas Galerie
‘Carl Ostendarp | Peter Schuyff | Yves Tessier’ Projex-Mtl Galerie, Montreal, Canada
2006 “Draw_drawing_2” The Foundry, (in the context of the London Biennale 2006), curated by Giacomo Picca, London, UK
1998 ‘Group Show’ Galerie Luz, Montreal, Canada
1997 ‘Merrill | Romani | Tessier’ Galerie Luz, Montreal, Canada
1995 ‘Lush’ Galerie Articule, curated by Michael Merrill and Andrea Szilasi, Montreal, Canada
1995 ‘Merrill | Ruschiensky | Szilasi | Tessier’ Galerie Local 906, Montreal, Canada
1994 ‘Misrule at the Apollo’ Temperance Space, curated by Jennifer Mc Mackon and Oliver Girling, Toronto, Canada
1994 ‘Systems of Exchange’ The Toronto | Montreal exchange arts project, Toronto, Montreal, Canada
1991 ‘Peinture’ Galerie Clark, curated by David Blatherwick, Montreal, Canada
1990 ‘Imposter | Impasto: Curatorial Laboratory Project number 2’ The Art Gallery of Hamilton, curated by Oliver Girling and Ihor Holubizky, Hamilton, Canada
1987 ‘Profils: Onze artistes québecois à New York’ Maison de la Culture Côte-des-Neiges, curated by Jean Paquin, Montreal, Canada
1986 ‘Small Works’ Garnett Press Gallery, Toronto, Canada
1986 ‘The Isis Show’ Virgil Gallery, New York, NY
1984 ‘Four Painters’ Gillespies Space, New York, NY
1982 ‘Aspects de la peinture montréalaise contemporaine’ Quebec Pavilion, Montreal, Canada
1976 ‘FORUM 76’ Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, curated by Leo Rosshandler, Montreal, Canada
