2025
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La vallée de l’étrange
Opening on Saturday, January 25, at 1 p.m.
Christian Messier’s exhibition La vallée de l’étrange plunges visitors into a zone of ambiguity in which the uncanny is materialized through recent paintings shaped by artificial intelligence. This unsettling dialogue between the familiar and the unknown is supplemented by earlier works that reflect his constant quest for the uncanny. The exhibition offers an immersive experience that challenges perceptions and shakes up points of reference.
Christian Messier’s exhibition La vallée de l’étrange plunges visitors into a zone of ambiguity in which the uncanny is materialized through recent paintings shaped by artificial intelligence. This unsettling dialogue between the familiar and the unknown is supplemented by earlier works that reflect his constant quest for the uncanny. The exhibition offers an immersive experience that challenges perceptions and shakes up points of reference.
This original series of large paintings, titled La vallée de l’étrange, presents odd characters who find themselves in uncomfortable situations but behave as if everything were utterly normal. People looking at these paintings, in their turn, experience empathy and feel the sense of malaise – one that is, paradoxically, joyous. These recent works (2024) were created with artificial intelligence, which contributes to the sense of the uncanny that Messier was looking for. The eponymous video exposes this feeling even more strongly, as Messier has used digital tools to create disturbing transformations of the characters through morphing and metamorphoses.
In this corpus, Messier explores the uncanny (S. Freud) and its technological derivative, the concept of the “uncanny valley,” which gives the exhibition its title. The uncanny is an unsettled feeling caused by confusion between the strange and the familiar. The uncanny valley (M. Mori) is a theory according to which the more similar an android robot is to a human being, the more monstrous its imperfections appear.
The exhibition also includes earlier works: a series of paintings, in a different style, titled Rétrospective de l’étrange (2010–23), and La genèse de l’étrange (1998–2008), a set of collages that bring to mind European photomontages of the 1920s and 1930s.
With this grouping, produced over a long period (1998–2024), visitors are invited to appreciate Messier’s various bodies of work, which share the common denominator of the notion of the uncanny. Further, we understand through his pieces that images do not involve vision alone; it is as if, by empathy, they encompass the totality of the viewer, appealing to the sensory, the mental, and the social.
© Christian Messier, video of the exhibition La vallée de l’étrange presented at EXPRESSION from January 25 to August 20, 2025. 4 min 30. Video credit : Félix Bouchard
© Christian Messier, Promotional video of the exhibition La vallée de l’étrange presented at EXPRESSION from January 25 to April 20, 2025, 48 s.
Archipel
Fidèles à une tradition bien établie, les étudiantes du programme Arts visuels et médiatiques du Cégep de Saint-Hyacinthe présenteront le fruit de leur parcours dans le cadre d’une exposition collective à EXPRESSION, Centre d’exposition de Saint-Hyacinthe. Intitulée Archipel, l’exposition se tiendra du 9 au 18 mai et réunira les œuvres de 34 étudiantes, offrant un aperçu riche et diversifié de leurs recherches artistiques et des compétences acquises tout au long de leur formation.
En présence d’invités protocolaires et du grand public, des prix seront remis aux finissant(e)s les plus méritant(e)s lors de la soirée d’ouverture qui aura lieu le vendredi 9 mai à 17 h.
Alors que, tout au cours de leur formation collégiale, les étudiant(e)s ont souvent été porté(e)s par les consignes et les contraintes thématiques dans la réalisation de projets artistiques, ce sont des œuvres plus personnelles et longuement travaillées qu’offre cette exposition. « Malgré nos différences et nos intérêts individuels, écrit le groupe dans son texte de présentation, nous formons une communauté authentique au sein de laquelle nous avons progressé au contact de l’autre. Notre groupe est ainsi devenu un lieu de diversité et de partage où nos mondes artistiques s’entremêlent. »
Inédites, les œuvres présentées attestent du cheminement des étudiant(e)s en une variété de techniques (dessin, peinture, sculpture, installation, photographie, vidéo, animation 3D, etc.) explorées au cours de leur formation ou développées pour ce projet spécifique avec la volonté d’un aboutissement plus marqué. Cette exposition rafraîchissante met en lumière le travail acharné des étudiant(e)s qui vous convient à plonger dans un archipel regorgeant d’histoires inédites, où chaque île dégage sa propre nature.
Nous vous attendons en grand nombre!
ORANGE 8th edition - Faim de rituel
Imaginée et élaborée par les commissaires Roxane Chamberland et Véronique Grenier, sous le thème FAIM DE RITUEL – Ensemble, activer le sacré, cette édition réunit 19 artistes et investit trois lieux chargés d’histoire dans le cœur du Pôle culturel de Saint-Hyacinthe. Inspiré de la structure formelle d’un rituel, l’événement se déploie en trois temps, mettant de l’avant l’Ouverture qui coïncide avec une fête au solstice d’été et la Fermeture qui devient un moment de gratitude à l’équinoxe d’automne. Au milieu s’ajoutent des journées clés, dont deux qui font office de Cœur de l’événement. Ces moments marqueront des temps précis au fil de l’été dans le but d’accompagner les visiteuses et visiteurs dans leur découverte de l’événement.
FAIM DE RITUEL
L’OUVERTURE
Dimanche 22 juin de 13 h à 17 h
Événement Facebook
La nuit les pierres nous regardent
At Night the Stones Watch Us
For more than ten years, the artist Fanny Mesnard has been developing a phantasmagorical universe inspired by the living world. From an ecofeminist perspective, she proposes to care for not just us but also everything around us. As we enter the exhibition La nuit les pierres nous regardent, we are welcomed by an image of a forest permeated by eerie light. The forest breathes: it is alive and inhabited. That is why we may be scared to walk through it alone. Importantly, this image acts as a portal that leads us toward dreamlike, fantastic places, if we have the courage to venture down the path that Mesnard has imagined.
In this new body of work, Mesnard takes inspiration from her recent trips to Norway, northern Québec, and Charente, where she was born. Though seemingly different, these places provided material for a new world to map out. During her visits, she was nourished by her observations on the land, her walks in the forest day and night, the flora she discovered, the motifs found on traditional clothing, and her readings of tales and legends that expressed a collective imagination. She wove links among these fragments of territories by integrating them into her works: drawings, paintings, ceramic sculptures, performances, textiles, photographs, and videos.
Mesnard builds a narrative thread from recurrent motifs (snails, water lilies, tables, hands, hoodies, and more) inspired by revisited tales in which liminal creatures, in incongruous stances, emerge to explore places. Are they dancing? Are they performing a ritual? By creating these characters with an intentionally open meaning, Mesnard invites us to see the world from other angles, to imagine how they might live in new territories. Now, it’s your turn to take the path wending through this metamorphosed exhibition space by becoming, in your turn, a part of the living story.
Exhibition design: Cooke-Mesnard