DECADE: 10th Anniversary Exhibition
Galerie Dominique Bouffard
June 16, 2016 – August 28, 2016

Galerie Dominique Bouffard is celebrating its 10th anniversary this summer with an exhibition of work by artists who exemplify the gallery’s past, present and future. Below is a conversation with Bouffard on the show, the space and contemporary art across a decade.

Greta Rainbow: What were your original goals when you first opened your gallery in 2006?

Dominique Bouffard: I worked for years for other gallerists. It is a scene I got to know and I liked the artist-gallerist-collector dynamics very much because I like working with people. I founded my gallery in 2006 with the aim of building an identity focused mainly on painting by supporting artists in the development of their career.

GR: The gallery has now shown over 70 solo and group exhibitions. Are there some that stand out to you as the most monumental in the gallery’s history?

DB: Pascal Caputo’s exhibition Latitude anthropique shown in 2015 has without a doubt been the most spectacular one. It had all the features of a great exhibition, be it the relevance of the topic treated, the quality of the works or the scenography. The event was on for nearly two months. Stéphanie Morissette’s L’inquiète forêt also made quite an impression. Poetically charged as it was, I saw it work its magic on viewers’ faces in front of her paper forest. The latter exhibition subsequently travelled around Quebec and abroad. More generally, I am proud of all the projects shown at the gallery. Each exhibition is an adventure and my role is to support the artist in his or her process. I am very particular about the choice of works, the texts and the staging. At the end of the day, I want the artist to be proud of the result and the public as well as the stakeholders to have the tools they need to understand and appreciate the work being shown.

GR: How has the world of contemporary painting, photography and printmaking changed in the last 10 years?

DB: Diversity in contemporary art is at an all-time high. The market has opened up to offer multidisciplinarity and has fragmented. In this context, we can see that painting is still reaching record sales on the markets and remains a safe investment. Since the beginning, our efforts have mostly been focussed on the promotion of this discipline. Over its history, painting has gone through constant renewal according to the social contexts in which the artists were working and I am happy that, still today, it has such an important share on the art market of contemporary art, in spite of economic fluctuations and the diversity of the offer.

GR: You describe the works in the exhibition DECADE as perpetuating discovery, as opposed to a look back through time. How do the selected works celebrate both the past and the future of Galerie Dominique Bouffard?

DB: Some of the artists whose works are shown in the exhibition DECADE have given me their trust from the very beginning and have thus had a part in the gallery’s evolution from the word ‘go’. It was important for me that they be part of the celebrations. It was also the opportunity to underline the presence of artists who have joined the team over the years. I have personally chosen all the pieces to combine them into a coherent body of work without saturating the space. In the final analysis, I think the exhibition is a real success and is worth visiting.

GR: The gallery first inhabited 1000 rue Amherst. How does the gallery interact with the historic Belgo Building? Does the space give certain opportunities or drawbacks?

DB: For eight years, we maximized the possibilities of the space we took over in 2006 and managed to attract the public, in spite of the fact that the gallery was geographically isolated and out of the way. Let’s say we managed to do a lot with very little, but I am very proud of how far we’ve managed to come. Moving to the Belgo was part of a plan for continuity and expansion. It was, on the one hand, a way to get closer to the scene and to widen our customer base, but mostly it was a way to give ourselves the means to host more ambitious projects and to offer my artists a more suitable exhibition context to show their work. It was also a way to prove we were legitimate and professional, since in this line of work, unless you’re very rich, time and strategy are clearly our allies.

GR: Looking into the next decade, do you have any new curatorial aims or aspirations?

DB: I am currently working on the development of a department of works on paper that should take shape as early as fall 2016. This will allow me to establish collaborations with certain artists and to have a more varied and accessible offer to show to collectors. After a brief pause imposed by the gallery’s move, I am planning to return to art fairs outside Montreal starting in 2017. New collaborations are also to come… but let’s keep a few surprises.