Ilana Pichon: Sequences of Territories
to
Martha Street Studio 11 Martha St, Winnipeg, Manitoba R3B 1A2
Ilana Pichon, "Think," 2017
screen print monotype #061, 15" x 11"
Opening Reception: Friday May 10th, 5-8 pm artist will be in attendance
Free Workshop by Ilana Pichon: Patterns & PostcardsSaturday, May 11, 2-5 pm (drop-in) ASL interpretation available by request
These events are free and open to the public
Martha Street Studio is pleased to present Sequences of Territories, a solo exhibition of work by Ilana Pichon (QC).
In Sequences of Territories, Pichon traces her movement, some stops, and landscapes she has encountered on three journeys driven alone by car between Québec City and Winnipeg (2015, 2017, 2019). With each separate journey she explores the memories associated with place and takes care to value the moment and the process. She studies the impact of loops and repetition through her artistic process.
Working with different techniques – silkscreen prints, video, sound, and mural painting – she aims to make connections between the internal and external dialogue that takes place when one responds to an abstract and concrete landscape, and to one another. Through these mediums, she translates various experiences and visual markers within poetic and colourful languages of repetition, intervals and overlays. Created over a long period of time, this body of work underlines time's malleability versus memory’s imprint. Sequences of Territories encourages the viewer to dive into various atmospheres and speeds of contemplation. Pichon illustrates the domestication of the landscape and depicts multiple views of the same territory.
Artist Statement:
Pichon's approach is in line with many other practices whose process and essence share the same activators, namely the observation and dissection of space. Affiliated with a form of domestication of in situ (site-specific) art, her practice challenges notions of provenance, structuring elements, material and emotional baggage, as well as graphical and physical rhythms. Intimately linked to location, its components and her personal life story, her approach ties in with the various territorial levels to produce an in situnetwork of reference points.
Living in Quebec for almost 20 years, she was originally raised in Europe in a French-Swiss family of travellers. She grew up following the rhythms of the long and regular moves that continually transformed her living environment. Prompted by this constant change of scenery, a search for a frame of reference manifested itself instinctively. Collecting in situ elements allowed her to structure her understanding of the new places she visited in order to find a type of stability within this constant motion. Her studies in architecture have sharpened this focus on reading space and its various territorial levels. They have also informed the way in which she works with various raw materials to extract their essence and instigate a dialogue between content and context to yield new interpretations.
Her practice thus follows the rhythm of this need for change and the will to understand new environments. Through this familiarization with space, she comes to embrace, codify and transform the collected reference points in the form of superimposed textures, patterns and graphical elements. This repetition of singular elements—both the actual space and the individual shapes within a given pattern—becomes the structuring core from which she can reinvent herself.
Ilana Pichon is a visual artist from Québec City, Canada, born and raised in Switzerland. She graduated with a Master of Architecture from Laval University (QC) in 2010. She has been awarded multiple grants from the Conseil des Arts et des Lettres du Québec for printmaking projects (2014, 2016, 2018) and recently received grants supporting video and artist books residencies through La Bande Video, Première Ovation and Engramme. Pichon's practice and artworks are strongly influenced by in situ experiences, evident in both her silkscreen printing and large-scale murals. Her murals are located across Canada and in Germany and she has shown nationally in galleries since 2014. Pichon's artworks are part of Global Affairs Canada's collection, Bibliothèque des Archives nationales du Québec’s heritage collection of artist books and Stewart Hall Gallery.