Josée Charbonneau completed her studies from the Cégep du Vieux Montréal in 1976 with a Degree in Graphic Design. In 2007, she became a full member of the Atelier Circulaire printmaking collective. Her main aspiration lies in the transposition of the figurative representation to printed images.

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Personal Exhibitions (Montreal): Galerie Luz, Montreal, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2015. Collectif Exhibitions (Montreal): Circular Gallery,, 2022, Maison du Maroc 2021, Galerie Luz, Montreal, 2019, 2017, 2016, 2014. Exhibitions: Maison Albert Bruneau, Quebec 2018, -(Montreal) Circular Gallery, 2019, 2018, 2013, 2008, Houses of Culture Saint-Antoine sur Richelieu 2017 and Houses of Culture- Extension 2015, Galerie du Viaduc, 2016, Gallery Circulaire 2008-2019, Collège du Vieux-Montréal 2008. His works were acquired by private and public collectors, included by the Bank National Library of Canada, Gabrielle Roy Library of Quebec and the National Archives of Quebec. 

 

La Forêt Argenté/Enchanté

Nature has long been the subject of focus for many photographers since the advent of the medium. Blindly, technological schemata have come to fascinate, void of an engaged or philosophical detachment: the essence of the act of “to paint with light

 

With La Foret Argenté/Enchanté, the essential returns, invoke s a quintessential quiet, the observer brought to contemplation, the processes of creation impact, the works created upon exquisite archival paper prove emblematic.   Josee Charbonneau has worked with a primary locus to achieve an aesthetic movement which denotes the causal rupture with the aforementioned primal “fascinus”, to surmise an aesthetic tradition that might yet endure contemporary speculation. 

 

Nature is rendered beyond landscape and document due to the indelible poetically symbolic of what is in allusion. Silver filigree lends great texture, denoting her mastery of print-work, upon the image, enriching the static imagery of these creations upon archival paper.  The border pales in contrast, surrounded by the luster of silver, fresh or oxidized simulacra of time’s passage.  Barthes wrote extensively of the “punctum whereas, Lacan endeared by the  representational subdual of

the conscience, acts in deference:

La Forêt Argentée appears born of the two theoretical positions.  The image fixed, we have the instant which leads to the  “death” inherent of Barthes posit, and with the progressive textured layering, the representational endures.

 

The singular power of the ultra-high contrast works by the pioneer, Eugene Atget, may come to mind, whose “trees” remain sculpted from ether. The work of silver process self-sublimated demarcates that rather than sculpt with shadow and light, reminiscent of the aesthetic lyricism of  Andre Kertesz, the act ofphotography may yield insight into a condition wherein concept engenders itself.

 

Art Critic Rajath Suri