Exhibition
Opening
Curator
Nicolas Grenier’s early works focused primarily on intimate portraits and genre scenes characterized by subdued, hushed atmospheres. The meticulous precision of his rendering, paired with hazy ambiances, left a lasting imprint on his later work and quickly established him as one of the leading painters of his generation. After a few years, Grenier shifted away from these subjects to pursue a more future-oriented practice rooted in architecture and urbanism. The same mesmerizing, almost otherworldly effects, achieved through his use of light and color, continue to appear in his work today, capturing viewers’ attention and guiding their gaze toward the conceptual core. These visual effects also contribute to the thoughtful reflections articulated in his works, inviting viewers to consider the full range of nuances within an idea, as well as the subtle transitions that unfold from one paradigm to another.
Configurations traces the evolution of Grenier’s practice over the past fifteen years through a body of work composed of preparatory drawings, selected small studies, and four large scale paintings. One can see the significant influence of his training at the California Institute of the Arts in Los Angeles, shaped by West Coast conceptualism and this city's extreme social disparities. After his stay in the United States, Grenier’s work adopted a distinctly political stance, focusing on the structures that govern our lives, societies, and cities. By examining economic systems alongside their connections to political doctrines and ideologies, Grenier presents a cheerfully cynical perspective on the power relations operating within these systems, including those of the art world itself. He illustrates how these configurations include or exclude certain realities, and even certain individuals, and how they affect each person’s experience of the world. In doing so, he exposes the inherent absurdity of the very foundations of these systems, often built on principles of exclusion, and the fragile shifts that can occur from one idea to another, from one conviction to another, from one social status to another.
Biography
Nicolas Grenier holds a BFA from Concordia University and an MFA from the California Institute of the Arts. His work has been exhibited at the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, the Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery in Toronto, the Art Gallery of Alberta in Edmonton, and the Bruges Triennial of Art and Architecture in Belgium. His work has also been presented by Luis De Jesus Los Angeles, Bradley Ertaskiran in Montreal, Gagosian Gallery in Athens, Denny Dimin Gallery in Hong Kong, Commonwealth & Council in Los Angeles, and Union Gallery in London. His works are included in the collections of the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, the Royal Bank of Canada, the Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec, and the National Bank of Canada. Grenier has participated in residencies at Fundación/op.cit. in Mexico City, ZK/U Center for Art and Urbanistics in Berlin, the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine, the Saas-Fee Summer Institute of Art in Berlin, and the Banff Centre. He is the recipient of the Pierre-Ayot Prize from the City of Montreal in 2016 and was a finalist representing Quebec for the Sobey Art Award in 2019. He is represented by Bradley Ertaskiran and Luis De Jesus Los Angeles.
Marianne Cloutier holds a PhD in art history and is an independent curator, writer, and educator based in Tiohtiá:ke / Mooniyang / Montreal. Her research focuses on contemporary art’s engagement with the living world and the intersections among art, science, and technology. She has worked as a curator for the McConnell Chair at Université de Montréal in research-creation on the reappropriation of motherhood and for the Sociability of Sleep project, and has curated numerous exhibitions as an independent curator. Her most recent curatorial project is the fifth edition of Regarde!, which brought together the work of 35 artists on the themes of future utopias and dystopias, in an outdoor exhibition along Ontario Street in Montreal’s Ville-Marie borough. From June 2023 to October 2024, she served as Interim Curator of Contemporary Art at the Musée d’art de Joliette, where she curated several exhibitions, including Biophilia featuring Zheng Bo, Montserrat Duran Muntadas, Jumana Manna, Katherine Melançon, Joshua Schwebel, and Laurence Paul Yuxweluptun, as well as Les intuitions by Julie Favreau, Fin by Mark Lewis, and Miel du temps by Wendt + Dufaux. Since July 2025, she has been Artistic Director of the Grantham Foundation for Art and the Environment.