Dive into pure colour at Galeries Roger Bellemare | Christian Lambert. All four exhibition spaces are filled with Fernand Leduc‘s recent colour field works in oil and pastel. The paintings practically pulsate with pigment. Colour comes alive – it radiates, floats, glows, grows. All works on display are monochromes, but step up close and you’ll notice layerings of colour creating complexity and depth.

In space 502 the four-panel painting Renaissance dominates the room. The painting is not yellow – it exudes yellow. I was almost hypnotized by the series of seven pastels on paper titled Mon Tibet à moi, their vivid jewel colours echoing saffron robes and Tibetan prayer mills.
Contrasting with the warm, lively colours in 502’s large room are the works of subtle hues in adjacent room. Rich earthy browns and greys inhabit the walls.

Across the hall, the vast space 501 is filled with airy, floating beiges, greys, and pastel colours. Leduc creates the most subtle shades, precisely controlled tones which communicate calm and openness. The colour seems to extend the borders of the paintings. Inky midnight blacks and espresso browns are displayed in smallest room, making you feel as though you stepped from day into night.

I suggest that you first experience Leduc’s work from a distance to get a sense of the painting’s atmosphere, and then inspect it from up close to appreciate the subtle organic textures which grow across the picture plane like tiny clouds of lichen.

One of Leduc’s works is titled Microchromies, and I think it is a good description of all his work – a microcosm of pigments and structures creating a macrocosm of colour.

To give you a sense of the exhibition, here are two panoramas:

Galeries Roger Bellemare | Christian Lambert, spaces 501 & 502
Fernand Leduc
La levée du voile
October 15 – November 19, 2011
www.rogerbellemare.com