Isabelle Hayeur
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Catherine 2006 Ink jet digital print
| Quaternaire I 2006 Ink jet digital print
| Quaternaire II 2006 Ink jet digital print
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Retournement 2006 Ink jet digital print
| Virginia 2005 Ink jet digital print
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Montreal artist Isabelle Hayeur uses today's digital tools to cast a penetrating eye on the urban landscape. In her work mountain-scapes of newly excavated farmland loom over suburban tract houses and the melancholic beauty of the sky or the remaining vestiges of the natural habitat lure our gaze. So familiar are these environments that it is possible not to question them. Hayeur creates hybrids of the banal as if to accentuate that the world before her lens is already a hybrid one.
Untitled Legacy, 2007, Hayeur’s timely panoramic digital montage of Toronto’s skyline commissioned for Contact, Toronto’s annual photography festival, can be seen stretching across the windows of the Drake Hotel on Queen Street West (May 3 – 28). Curator Mia Nielsen writes: “The hurried passer-by may dismiss this work as a conventional photograph or perhaps even a reflection of the cityscape. However, upon closer examination the view begins to unravel, revealing a composite image of the area so true to life as to constitute a digital trompe l’oeil. Hayeur’s process of isolating landscape elements from various photographs, and then fusing them together into a new, finely distilled image subtly reveals some of the tensions inherent in an urban neighbourhood in transition.”
Isabelle Hayeur’s work has been exhibited in several centres in Canada and elsewhere, including the following solo exhibitions: Inhabiting: the works of Isabelle Hayeur, Southern Alberta Art Gallery, Lethbridge; Musée National des Beaux-arts du Québec (2007) and Oakville Galleries (2006); and Isabelle Hayeur: Destinations, Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MassMoca), North Adams, Massachussetts, U.S.A. (2004). Group exhibitions in Canada and abroad include: Thought Provoking, Sense Provoking, Noorderlicht Photography, Groningen, Netherlands (2007); The Collection: recent acquisitions, Musée d'art contemporain, Montréal; Sound and Vision, Photographic and Video Images in Contemporary Canadian Art, Montreal Museum of Fine Arts and Channel, Cupola Contemporary Art, Sheffield, U.K. (2006); Urban Territories, Musée d'art contemporain, Montréal; Paysages: constructions et simulations, Casino Luxembourg, forum d'art contemporain, Luxembourg; The Space of Making, Neuer Berliner Kuntsverein Berlin, Stadtisches Museum Zwickau, Kuntsmuseum Heideinheim, Stadtische Galerie Walkraiburg, Germany (2005).
The gallery is pleased to welcome Isabelle Hayeur with a solo exhibition of new photographs entitled Displacements and Relocations (May 16 to June 16).
Exhibitions
Isabelle Hayeur - Displacements and Relocations