Dividing her time between Montreal and France, Robbin Deyo has been developing a body of pictorial work characterized by recurring subjects and repeated shapes for the past ten years. Many of her pieces involve candy-bright or pastel encaustic, a smooth, translucent medium suggestive of cake icing or hardened sugar. Coated on various surfaces, shaped with cookie cutters, she uses it to create mouth-watering ornate ensembles that evoke the traditional woman's world (cooking, decorating, repetitive tasks). The heavenly vault is another theme, as seen in Skyscape (2003-2004). This monumental cerulean reminiscence of summer days is accompanied by a selection of recent pieces.

Opening on July 15, 2006 at 3 p.m.
Presentation by Robbin Deyo on July 26 at 7 p.m.

While continuing to explore the role of edibles in present-day art, the second edition of ORANGE: Contemporary Art Event of Saint-Hyacinthe takes a more critical and political tack. The chosen theme – Como Como, meaning "how I eat" in Spanish – implies an intention to raise awareness of the food chain and its issues. Probing society's eating habits and going beyond our relationship to table fare to address the agricultural and environmental aspects of the field-to-fork journey, the event provides ample food for thought.

Since 1987, Montréal artist Sylvain Bouthillette has been developing a highly distinctive corpus of paintings, drawings, sculptures, photographs and graphics. Initially inspired by the American “Bad Painting” movement and borrowing from popular punk imagery, his work has since opened onto spiritual considerations stemming from the active practice of Buddhism. While retaining the “trash” look, it distills punk rock into a singular form of spirituality. In an otherwise shapeless world, a fascinating bestiary prompts awareness of the surrounding flow of energy that the artist seeks to make palpable in the works' materiality. Coproduced by EXPRESSION and the Musée régional de Rimouski, this exhibition curated by Bernard Lamarche and accompanied by a publication surveys a prolific creator in mid-career.

Hailing from Belgium and living in Montréal since 1996, Stéphane Gilot finds food for his art in multiple meanings and power structures revealed in game playing. He creates architectural installations (some including performance videos) that alter the exhibition venue along the lines of its physical and ideological characteristics and spark reflection on its function. These transformed spaces interact according to a given fictional dynamic, enabling encounters with the Other in situations where cultural habits, convictions and standards are reinterpreted. At EXPRESSION, the artist is showing Temps-libre, the fifth episode of a series titled Plans d'évasions, begun in 2000. Like the previous episodes, Temps-libre incorporates video and performance elements and offers participative possibilities.

For two decades, Claudie Gagnon has been retrieving household objects to produce playful art. Her installations, which often include performance, recall curio cabinets and revolve around themes of everyday life, time and social relationships. Gagnon has revived the tableau vivant genre to create worlds where the ordinary and the extraordinary rub shoulders. She makes liberal reference to art and film history. The artist delights in endowing objects with a theatrical presence, as amply demonstrated by her creative process. Conceived and curated by Mélanie Boucher, this major exhibition includes a retrospective section as well as new work. It will be coproduced by EXPRESSION and another Quebec museum institution, and accompanied by a publication covering the first twenty years of the artist's career.

In pictures that query the past, Saint-Hyacinthe photographer Michel Arcouette casts a contemporary eye on a place remembered, invoking memories of the working-class world of his forebears. This photographic and conceptual installation pays tribute to his father, his grandfather and their co workers at Stanley Tools in Roxton Pond, which shut down in 1984. Marked by emerging light and windows signifying openness, The photos symbolically reflect his social, political and poetic concerns, but also a memory and a sense of questioning about life and humankind. The dozen large-format pictures are accompanied by artifacts that bear witness to the past, and a text by the artist's son takes the story to the fourth generation.