Jeff Alarie
A self-taught artist from La Tuque in Haute Mauricie, Jeff Alarie (1984) began his artistic practice at a very young age. Popularized in his birthplace and surrounding regions, he had his first professional gallery exhibitions before he was an adult. Continually refining his research work, he interweaves painting and metal sculpture techniques, which he has been practicing for over twenty years.
The interrelationships between minerals and the plant kingdom fascinate him. The slow movement of plants, their growth, their power waiting for emancipation. The observation of the phenomenon of rebirth, of the constantly repeated cycle of the alternation of the seasons, satisfies his desire to immortalize and his will to suspend the moment. His technique is part of the direct, the stimuli of spontaneity and the raw state, using for example the aerosol. Despite his research and the development of techniques, the control of the precision of application flirts closely with the abandonment and letting go of the material. A great sensitivity to the nature that surrounds him.
The horizon line is essential in his work: it anchors the feet to the ground, attracts the eye and situates the individual in space. We find there what grows, what grows and what multiplies; in short, a feeling of blossoming, sensuality and lust emerges from it.
A naive mix of minimalism, street art and pop then emerges, skilfully touching on the dreamlike and plasticity of organic surrealism. The primitive unconscious that his pieces thus stimulate in the viewer perpetuates the legacy of surrealism, its openness to implied realities. The latter can thus immerse himself in a symbolism of escape and contemplation, of proximity to Nature and this nature (of the individual).
