Isabelle Hayeur - Displacements and Relocations

Catherine 2006 Isabelle Hayeur Ink jet digital print 43" X 62" Edition 5	Quaternaire I 2006 Isabelle Hayeur Ink jet digital print 43.5" X 65" (111 x 165 cm) Edition 5	Quaternaire II 2006 Isabelle Hayeur Ink jet digital print 43.5" X 65" (111 x 165 cm) Edition 5
Retournement 2006 Isabelle Hayeur Ink jet digital print 84" X 43,8" (213 x 111cm) Edition 5	Virginia 2005 Isabelle Hayeur Ink jet digital print 43" X 65" Edition 5

The gallery is pleased to welcome Montreal artist Isabelle Hayeur with a solo exhibition of new photographs entitled Displacements and Relocations.

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 the 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.”

Artists:
Isabelle Hayeur