Collection: Richard-Max Tremblay

Richard-Max Tremblay has lived and worked in Montreal since 1972.

After completing his studies at Goldsmiths College in London, Richard-Max Tremblay pursued a practice in both painting and photography. The 1980s and 1990s were marked by exhibitions in Quebec and France, including shows at the Canadian Cultural Centre in Paris and the Cultural Services of the Quebec Delegation in Paris.

His exhibitions *Hors Champ II* (painting, 2014) and *Déboîtements* (photography, 2015) explore the fragility of memory and the archive. For over forty years, his work has evolved around the notions of the "hidden," absence, loss, and concealment.

He was awarded a residency at the Canada Council for the Arts (CCA) Studio in Paris in 2014. This project, which also led him to Berlin and Venice, culminated in the exhibition *Caché* at Division Gallery in the spring of 2017. This exhibition also served as a synthesis of the artist's journey.

A retrospective initiated by curators Sarah Boucher from the Musée des beaux-arts de Sherbrooke (MBAS) and Caroline Loncol Daigneault from the University of Sherbrooke Art Gallery (now renamed Galerie Antoine-Sirois) is being prepared for fall 2022, with an accompanying publication and tour. Curator Suzanne Pressé is overseeing this project.

Recipient of the 2003 Louis-Comtois Award.

Recipient of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts (RCA) Trust Fund Award in 2015

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As a painter and photographer, I have dedicated my career to exploring the relationships between the true and the untrue, expression and suggestion, disappearance and emergence, the hidden, absence, and the obstacles that prevent us from seeing. 

My recent exhibition *Éclipse*, presented simultaneously at the Musée des beaux-arts de Sherbrooke (painting component) and at the Antoine-Sirois Art Gallery at the University of Sherbrooke (photography component), brought together over 145 works spanning a period of 45 years. These exhibitions reflected areas of research at the crossroads of photography and painting.

After completing my studies in visual arts and painting first in Montreal at UQAM and later at Goldsmiths College of Art, University of London, I began a career primarily as a painter, although photography gradually became an indispensable tool in my practice.

The painting *Loggia*, oil on canvas, fits within the aforementioned approach, focusing on the hidden, the obstacle, and what prevents us from seeing. A loggia is a type of Italian-style balcony. Seen from the inside, two closed curtains reveal, through a narrow gap, an opening onto a blue sky. My intention was to highlight the curtains and the sunlight accentuating the folds in the fabric at the opening. The idea is not to show the sky that one would like to see.