Yves Gaucher - Dynamic Equilibrium: In Gallery & Online Exhibition

In 1950s Montreal, a group of artists known as the Plasticiens rebelled against the spontaneous gestures of the Automatistes with geometric abstraction. Juaran (Rodolphe de Repentigny), Louis Belzile, Jean-Paul Jérôme, Fernand Toupin, and Fernand Leduc comprised this first group of Plasticien painters who practiced a geometric abstraction that drew from Cubist art. A second break from Automatisme occurred when artists Guido Molinari and Claude Tousignant also embraced geometric painting but with increasing flatness and simplification of form. By the 1960s, their works had evolved from a focus on form to an exploration of the dynamic possibilities of colour. Joined by Yves Gaucher and Charles Gagnon, these four artists became known as the post-Plasticiens. 

The development of Plasticien painting in response to Automatisme paralleled the shift in the United States from Abstract Expressionism to Post-Painterly Abstraction, but the Montreal artists differed from the hard-edge painters in both America and Europe. This distinction is best articulated by Roald Nasgaard in an essay for the catalogue accompanying the exhibition The Plasticiens and Beyond: Montreal, 1955 - 1970. Nasgaard writes, “The Canadians painted on an American scale, and they privileged pure unmodulated colour. But their edges were hard in a European way, razor-edge in comparison with the softer new American edges that let the colour fields they defined breathe with Matissian ease. The Canadians in contrast pulled their colour planes taut and abutted them tightly so that it was not their individual character as much as their interrelatedness that registered, and how their colours seemed to mutate under the roving eye. In brief, if in New York the new ‘hard-edge’ was about the aesthetics of colour, in Montreal it was about colour’s dynamics.” This interest in the dynamics of colour is particularly evident in the works of Yves Gaucher.

Born in Montreal, Gaucher initially rose to prominence as a highly innovative printmaker. Recognized for his technical ingenuity and experimentation with heavy embossing techniques, the artist won awards at national and international print shows. As the president of the Association des peintres-graveurs de Montreal, Gaucher worked exclusively in printmaking from 1960-64. During this time, he was also paying attention to the advancements being made in American abstraction. Mark Rothko's connection between abstraction and transcendental experiences had a particularly important influence on the artist. Gaucher saw the Mark Rothko retrospective organized by the Museum of Modern Art (New York) twice -- once in Manhattan and then in Paris in the fall of 1962. It was there that the artist realized that his artistic aspirations were more aligned with American abstraction than the Cubism-based abstraction of European artists. Beyond the influence of other abstract artists, Gaucher also drew from his personal interests, allowing his love of jazz and Indian classical music to influence his work. Anton Webern's atonal music was particularly important to the development of Gaucher's distinct visual language.

Yves Gaucher - Dynamic Equilibrium brings together a selection of paintings and serigraphs made by the artist during the 1980s and 1990s. In many ways, the works featured in this exhibit represent a culmination of the ideas that he explored in preceding series. Fente evokes the interplay of forms seen in Gaucher's Jericho paintings which were inspired by the visual concerns of Barnett Newman's painting of the same title. The serigraph also reflects the influence of Frank Stella's irregular polygons. Its title, Fente, is the French word for slit or crack, referring to a narrow opening. Signal and Untitled (1990) recall the horizontal compositions and assymetrical subdivisions of his Dark Paintings. Untitled (1990) as well as the canvases featured in this exhibit are examples of Gaucher's Pale Paintings, a series that includes some of the most compelling works of his career. Characterized by a subdued colour palette and asymmetrical compositions, these works show flat planes of colour arranged in a manner that causes their crisp edges -- some vertical, others at an angle -- to appear as though pushing against each other. This is what creates the subtle tension in these works. The Pale Paintings are a culmination of the ideas explored by Gaucher in series such as the Colour Band paintings, the Jerichos and the Dark Paintings. As with Signal and Untitled (1990), V+Ps and Untitled (1988) exemplify what Nasgaard identified in Gaucher's later works as a dynamic equilibrium, the visual sense of both "a hard-won struggle" and "an irrevocable harmony." 

Together, the selected artworks reflect Gaucher's unique contributions to the post-Plasticien group and to Canadian abstraction. They demonstrate both his thoughtful exploration of colour's dynamics and his desire to facilitate a contemplative experience for the viewer.