Dan Brault studied painting and drawing at Concordia University and graduated with a BFA in 2002. He recently finished his MFA at Laval University in 2006 and was short-listed for the Joseph Plaskett foundation Award. He has shown his work throughout notable public galleries and artist-run centers around Canada and is now represented by Peak Gallery in Toronto. In the near future, he will be participating to the 26th edition of the Symposium international d’art Contemporain of Baie Saint-Paul in Québec. His work will be presented in Toronto at Peak Gallery (June 2008), in Ottawa-Gatineau at Art-Image Center (October 2008) and in Montreal at Galerie Lilian Rodriguez (October 2008), at SKOL arts center (2009) and at Galerie d’art d’Outremont (2009). In 2007, he was awarded a CALQ (Quebec Art Council) research and travel award. Dan Brault lives and works in Québec City.

My artistic practice references a contemporary approach to painting that is constructed on a recurrent interest in the confrontation of eclectic imagery. I am fascinated by the interconnections created when two paintings are forced together. One might speak of cohabitation, an unnatural and gutsy artistic suggestion – but a successful one. My work’s main concern is the uniting of signs, motifs, shapes and the specific stylistic variations of painting’s history. Cutting across the conventions of comics, portraiture, still life and abstraction, the pictorial codes juxtaposed become an awkward visual phrasing. Thus, my work is fuelled by aesthetic and semantic equations that generate an eclectic visual phrasing, installed and offered for the reading as a whole. What lacks in grammar is overcome and replaced by genuine audacity. The works spark a kind of unnatural syntactical composition in which the units, joined and abutted, take part in a medium of thought that is inextricably linked to an aesthetic process.

My work offers a pluralistic approach to painting and is an innovative and daring interbreeding of image fragments that appear to be incongruous but that is sustained by an inspired and intuitive relational study of the hanging disposition and graphic content. The newfound sociability and conciliation between the imagery unites to create bold compositions. My work brings to mind the strategies of the techno musician who samples and mixes bits of music to compose surprising pulp rhythm atmospheres and visceral experiences. My work proposes a reflection on the nature of painting and its intricate associations to our epoch by combining fragments of historical ways of thinking with a genuine intake on new social, cultural and aesthetical structures of today’s reality (e.g: multiculturalism and techno culture). My work’s “signature” is based on category breaking and the associations made between the paintings. The appreciation for my work, therefore, dwells on our capacity to imagine links and combinations between the disparate elements. The pieces presented for Vocabularium are open-minded and generous for they put forward further creative perspectives than the usual canvas pedigree.

Dan Brault