Jack Shainman Gallery is pleased to announce Distraction, a solo exhibition of new gouaches by Pierre Dorion.

Pierre Dorions gouaches share the photographic provenance from the urban environment as do his paintings. Dorion insistently collects photographic notations always with the intention of eventually transforming them into paintings and gouaches. During this process, Dorion takes these studied and pared down snapshots of banal, everyday objects and allows them to develop an uncanny and mysterious quality, taking on the appearance of sculptures or installations while remaining equally indebted to documentary photography and a sense of objectivity inherent to that practice. Through the heavy opacity of the gouache, Dorion removes the immediate reference to the medium itself. While drawing reference to the metaphysical qualities Giorgio de Chiricos surrealist paintings, he conversely avoids expression and offers the work a cerebral aspect, cool and distanced, even lonely.

The speed at which the watercolor pigments are able to dry accelerates the production and provides Dorion with a greater freedom of exploration. Dorion begins each gouache by identifying the dominant value found within the photograph and uses that as the first monochrome hue that is laid upon the paper. The objects are then erased, reduced, polished, simplified and any unwanted details are discarded until they become their own.

Dorion lives and works in Montreal, Quebec. Selected solo exhibitions include Pierre Dorion: Peinture et Photographie, Musee des beaux-arts de Montreal, Retrospective, Galerie d art du Centre Cultural de l Universite de Sherbrooke, Canada and Auto-portraits: 1990-1994, Centre International d Art Contemporain de Montreal. Selected group exhibitions include The Denatured Human: Contemporary Art from Glen Blooms Collection, Carleton University Art Gallery, Ottawa, Idées de Paysage / Paysages D’idée 2, Musée d Art Contemporain de Montréal, Montréal and The Whole World is Rotten, Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati, OH.