PLATO

'The inside is the fold of the outside,’ stated Gilles Deleuze in his lecture on another French philosopher, Michel Foucault. This idea has been a leitmotif of Maude Corriveau’s artistic career, with fabric folds, glass panes and windows being a constant presence, suggesting an expanded space beyond the flat surface and creating a flow between the interior and the exterior. The exhibition’s title, “Depth of Surface” follows the cue of architecture, where similar techniques are used to suggest the relationship between the building’s facade and its interiors. In literature the term refers to a deeper meaning that can be identified in a text where it is not explicitly stated.

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Corriveau’s works present a perfect exercise in mindfulness and expanding the limits of our perception. The seductive, velvety texture of pastel lures you in and invites you to dive into the surface and back into the illusion of space that its tiny particles create. Similarly, the artist uses the luminous properties of oil to replicate the light effects on screens yet the raw weave of the canvas circles the viewer back to its physicality. Soft gradations, folds, transparencies and shadows are all meant to deceive and delight, while providing a space for escape and reflection.

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The corner of Corriveau’s atelier housing the table with her drawing materials resembles a studio of a make-up artist. The colors of her innumerable pastel sticks and round tubs of pigment bring to mind eyeshadows and blushes. Nearby are make-up sponges and cotton wads used to apply and smudge the color. Even the plastic containers holding the pigment resemble eyeshadow palettes. The titles – Peach Skin, Silken Grid, Curtain’s Embrace – also evoke tactility and suggest poetic sensuality, expanding the experience beyond the realm of the visual and blurring the line between the mind and the body.

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To create her compositions, Corriveau arranges disposable or discarded objects and synthetic materials that she photographs, modifies in software and then paints or draws. Remarkably, paper walls, raw sheets of glass, plastic vases and houseplant shadows are transformed into ethereal, dreamy scenes, infinitely seductive to both the eye and the mind. Like an actress or a social media influencer, the artist builds up, contours, retouches, lightens and highlights the ordinary reality to suggest the sublime. The recurring motif of the curtain points to the dangerous allure of the screen serving as a faux window to the world, while underscoring technology’s ability to transport us to another dimension of feeling and existence.  ​

 

In her most recent oil paintings of curtains and draped fruit, Corriveau employed AI software to create the compositions. Shocked by the uncanny results, she partially incorporated them into the work while humanizing the rest. She has discovered that computer systems only go so far when it comes to lifting the curtain of reality to reveal higher realms. To truly reach that goal, and the effect she continuously seeks – that of blurring the line between the analog and the digital – she had to use her own subjective eye and hand.

 

Corriveau admits that experience is the driving force behind her creative process. She seeks chance encounters with optical phenomena emerging out of her rearrangements of materials. She also expects the viewers to physically interact with the works, observe them from various angles and in connection with one another and the space they inhabit, to examine the layers, planes, dimensions and surfaces. Noticing the shadow of a palm tree on a wall on a sunny day, catching a reflection in a window, getting lost in the folds of shiny fabric or disappearing inside the flat surface of a digital screen: these are all familiar sensations that this exhibition evokes. Revealing the depth of surfaces, Corriveau’s paintings and drawings allow the viewer to question the power and the limits of the image. They also question the act of looking itself, an exercise in pleasure and emotion that also grants us the agency of choice: to be grounded in the present moment or let go of control and dive into the fold.

 

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Maude Corriveau (b. 1986) is a Canadian artist based in Montreal. She obtained her Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Visual and Media Arts from the University of Quebec in Montreal. Corriveau’s work has been featured in numerous solo and group exhibitions, including the Museum of Fine Arts in Mont-Saint-Hilaire, Galerie Cache Studio, Orama, Plato Gallery, Galerie Nicolas Robert and many others, as well as art fairs across Canada and the United States. She has received grants from the Conseil des arts du Québec (2024), the Vermont Studio Center Fellowship (2023), the Canada Council for the Arts (2021) and the Yvonne L. Bombardier Graduate Scholarship (2019). Maude’s work has been featured in numerous publications such as Le Canada Francais, Vie des Arts, Le Devoir, Le Nouvelliste, Le Culte, La Press and many more. Maude’s pieces adorn museum, private and corporate collections, including those of Museum of Fine Arts of Quebec, BMO Bank of Montreal, Desjardins and Ubisoft, among others. She is currently a resident in the NARS Foundation residency program in Brooklyn, NY.