Réjean DORVAL

Originally from Quebec (Canada – 1966), Réjean Dorval trained in drawing and performance. His artistic work questions our connection to the elements of nature and the principle of transformation that animates all living things.

Réjean’s work presents large-scale charcoal drawings that evoke nature in our intimate connection with the element Earth, but also in its immensity, as something that both encompasses and exceeds us. His evocations of nature, through the figures of the forest, the tree, the rock, the animal, open onto the imaginary, onto a space of quiet reverie, like a possible return to the sources of what has always inhabited us.

MANIFESTO

If we are receptive, I think that art can become a formidable lever for transformation, of oneself and of the way we look at things. I am especially driven by this idea of transformation. In the process of creation, just as in front of a work of art, a whole internal mechanism can be set in motion; something in us that intertwines emotions, imagination, thoughts and physical sensations then sets in motion, propels us, projects us towards somewhere else.

I believe in the transformative power of poetic images, those that allow us to reconnect with what we feel is essential, primary, in ourselves and in our relationship to the world around us.

In my drawing work, I try to reach states of the body in relation to the subjects I am dealing with. These states induce gestures, graphic writings, and particular tracings.

I always hope that my drawings will be inhabited, as if penetrated by these states of the body, in order to make them as lively as possible…

In my performances, I try above all to place myself in a state of receptivity, to be attentive to the tools, accessories and materials that I bring into play. I try to be attentive to what they tell me, to see how I can access their language, how I can make them speak. I try to say with their own vocabulary, with their own grammar, what is going through me at the moment when I take them in my hands. Perhaps I am also telling my story through them, a little without my knowing it.

Réjean DORVAL, May 2018

 

Presentation of the work exhibited in the winery
Acquisition date: April 2020
Exhibited in the distillery

“Le Grand Pin – Big Pine Tree”, 2016
Charcoal on paper affixed to canvas, 300 x 150 cm