PROJECT
Anibal Catalan regards his paintings, drawings and installation art as a form of experimental domestic architecture. The bursting colors on his canvas depict architectural elements – walls, roofs, pillars, stairs – that appear to be deformed by external forces and seen through an exaggerated perspective. Inspired by the Megalopolis, Anibal Catalan describes Mexico City as an open and free space filled by its disorder and a state of constant excess and crisis. He characterizes his work as "an endless labyrinth with multiple entrances and exits. " With his paintings, Anibal Catalan tries to create a paradoxal space where the spectator can feel a sense of order and calm at one moment and sink into chaos in the next.

BIO
Fanny Mesnard was born in Angoulême (France) in 1980. After completing a DEA (Diploma of Advanced Studies) ès Lettres et Arts from Université d'Aix/Marseille, in 2004, and obtaining the same year, a DNSEP from the École Supérieure des Beaux Arts de Marseille (ESBAM), she has continued to develop her practice of painting in the South of France where she lives. In 2008, she will participate in the Biennial of Young Artists from Europe and the Mediterranean (BJCEM) held in Puglia. The past three years, she has been working on representations of great apes. The primates appear in colorful camaïeu painted in a very spontaneous manner. The speed of execution allows the artist to produce a series of paintings for every new exhibition and to continue to pursue simultaneously her pictorial research and her reflexion on installation art.

PROJECT
OTHER says he has a love-hate issue with paintings in galleries and workshops. Even though his production of paintings, drawings and etchings pays the bills, these art forms do not bring him the sense of freedom and transgression that he gets from graffiti. "Every year, I paint a few walls. I can't explain the feeling that comes from painting a freight train during a violent snow storm… the light… the fresh air… it's true freedom."Scattered throughout Asia, Europe and North America, his realistic graffiti work, his imaginative compositions and his poems represent some a kind of scattered intimate diary

BIO
Graeme Patterson was born in 1980 in Saskatoon (Saskatchewan). He studied at the Dundas Valley School of Art and at the University of Saskatchewan. In 2002, he graduated with a BFA in fine arts from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design. His exhibition Woodrow, originally showcased at the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, has been traveling across Canada since 2006. It has been showcased in Montréal, Calgary, Victoria, Toronto and Saskatchewan. From 2006 through 2008, Graeme Patterson lived in Woodrow (Saskatchewan) but has just recently returned to Halifax. Some of his art work is now part of the public collections of the National Gallery of Canada, the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, the Beaverbrook Art Gallery, the Rooms Provincial Art Gallery, the Mendel Art Gallery, and the Saskatchewan Arts Board.

PROJECT
Throughout his various projects, Graeme Patterson has developed a very personal "stop-motion" animation technique which creates frame by frame movement with unanimated objects. This "do it yourself" approach is constant in all aspects of his productions. His projects can be classified as sculptural installations but they are really a combination of video, robotic, audio, music and interactive elements. His work is largely inspired by personal memories and various experiences combined with a generous measure of fantasy and surrealism. His installation art leads the viewer into a universe where games are never completely innocent. For the Symposium, he has imagined a project based on his personal obsession with dance.With this project, he will try to create a stop-motion series of animations illustrating his own interpretation and understanding of Québec's traditional dances.While in Baie-Saint-Paul, he will take dancing lessons and translate this experience into two animated sequences featuring his body as well as smallerscale figurines.

PROJECT
Annie Baillargeon's photographic work is a crossover of visual arts, media arts, and performance art. Using the human body as the motif, she reduces it to an infinitely small scale. She then demultiplies it digitally and weaves together choreographically anecdotes and enigmas. The viewer's attention is attracted to strange, caustic, and tragic universes that raise questions about the human condition and evoke the collective and individual psychotic tyranny of our society. She finds inspiration in mass culture, the cinematographic universe, fairy tales, and old aesthetic traditions as well as in certain clichés concerning women. During the Symposium, she will set up a miniature shooting studio to establish a collusion with the public. Visitors will be invited to play along with photography sessions within a universe previously set up by the artist with costumes and accessories. The model's identity will be removed, leaving only the body shape and gestures to be used as motifs in Annie Baillargeon's ornamental constructions.

PROJECT
"Overall, my work is a form of conscious meditation which includes every day images and objects. Daily meditation is nothing less than a transformation of the mind; a psychological revolution that fills everyday existence as we live it, with compassion, love and the energy necessary to transcend all forms of pettiness and mediocrity. I try to make good use of this idea/technique in my studio and in my day-to-day life to guide my choices. It energizes my work and one could also say that it is my train of thought, my leitmotiv. My artistic work begins at point where an attitude toward life and a quest for a lively spirituality take shape, beyond fears, neuroses, and parasitic preoccupations.It is the vehicle of a mental process rather than aesthetic style; it endeavours to show the possibility of overture and it toys with the idea of recovering the universal connection: intact with entireness. Through my artistic work, I try to uncover the space where one can see things with trenchant, intelligent, and inquiring uncertainty. The nature of this space is the openness:an unknown place that feeds us, and, at the same time, causes us to panic.

BIO
In 2002, Dan Brault graduated with a BFA in visual arts from Concordia University and in 2006, he received his MFA in visual arts from Université Laval. His work has been shown in numerous galleries and artist centres in Québec and other parts of Canada. He is now represented by the Peak Gallery in Toronto. In the near future, his work will be exhibited at the Art-Image centre in Gatineau and at the Peak Gallery in Toronto. In 2009, his works will be showcased in Galerie d'Art d'Outremont and at the Centre des arts actuels SKOL, in Montréal. In 2007, Dan Brault was awarded a research- creation and travel grant by the CALQ (Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec). Dan Brault lives and works in Québec City.

PROJECT
As would a DJ, Dan Brault offers a sampling art form that goes beyond the simple game of quotations and borrowings. "My practice in painting relies on the confrontation of images of various aesthetic origins. From these images are produced paintings that vary in style and in technique, ranging from hard edge paintings to comic book illustrations, and finding inspiration in certain classical genres such as landscapes and still lifes." During the Symposium, the artist plans to assemble in his workshop some fifteen canvases of various sizes, shapes, and stylistic variations. He will use a variety of techniques such as egg tempera, saponified wax, aerograph, acrylic and oil painting. Throughout the creation process, the paintings will be placed, grouped, and arranged on the walls so that they may dialogue, exchange, confront and complement each other in a sort of chaotic and visual syntax. The configuration of the work (mural installation) will be changing constantly during the Symposium. As a result, the aesthetic experience will be progressive and ephemeral, always renewing the public's rapport with the exhibited work.

BIO
Josée Landry-Sirois lives and works in Québec City. She holds a BFA in sculpture and painting. She also has a second-cycle microprogramme diploma in art book edition from L'École des arts visuels de l’Université Laval. Her interests range from photographic imagery to collage, art books, installation art and drawing. In 2005, she participated in a group residency of emerging Québec artists Residence story/the artist, the survivor, presented by the Chambre Blanche during the Manif d'art 3. In 2004, she took part in the Massacre à la scie event and she received the Yaflo grant awarded during the exhibition of the works of the BFA graduates of Université Laval. In 2005, she was nominated for the Videre Relève award.

PROJECT
The autobiographic account is at the core of the artistic exploration of Josée Landry-Sirois and it underpins an existential quest, the process of which has neither a preconceived form or nor a completion. The art of Josée Landry-Sirois is a veritable laboratory of intimacy; it invites the viewer to discover a narrative space that reveals as much as it conceals the artist's interiority. She positions herself at the centre of a weaving where reality interlaces with fiction; she draws and photographs her daily encounters, collects meaningless objects, meticulously archives used matches and chewed gum, and fills notebooks with notes and anecdotes. "During this Symposium, I would like to construct a fictional tale with drawings inspired by my encounters with you, the public. You will be the models that I will transform into animals… Already, I can hear myself saying that you look like a tiger…"

BIO
Mathieu Valade was born in Salaberry-de-Valleyfield in the Montérégie region of Québec. In 2003, he graduated from UQAM with a BFA in visual arts and went on to get his MFA from Université Laval in 2005. He has had several solo exhibitions, particularly at Centre d'exposition Circa in Montréal, at Lieu in Québec City and Espace virtuel in Chicoutimi. He has also taken part in several undertakings, namely in an exhibition at Alternator Gallery in Kelowna (B. C.) as part of an exchange between artist centre L'Oeil de Poisson and Alternator Gallery, and also at Centro Desarolo des Artes Visuals in Havana, Cuba. Mathieu Valade is a founding member of the Pique- Nique collective, an organisation devoted since 2001 to the spontaneous intrusion of art in the public space. To date, Pique-Nique has hosted about ten artistic events. Mathieu Valade is also member of the board of directors of L'Œil de Poisson in Québec City.

PROJECT
"My sculptural practice explores various types of hybridation of references to objects. Using geometric volumes as a foundation, I create simple shapes that evoke various everyday objects: furniture, industrial design or architecture. Without ever openly naming the object, the volume discreetly transforms itself into a table, a transportation crate, a lighthouse, thereby referring to what is known and the interpretable, but also confused by the geometric object whose silent effectiveness clouds the issue and the references to reality. Put into context, the created objects fit into the spaces for which they have been designed thereby assuming their function. In a more traditional exhibition setting, the accumulation of objects and of constructions plays on the notion of exhibition and of the highlighting of certain elements on a journey where nothing is to be seen, unless one tarries, bypasses or opens up."

BIO
Born in Shawinigan, Josette Villeneuve graduated with a BFA in visual arts from Université du Québec in Trois-Rivières. She was selected for the 2e Biennale nationale de sculpture contemporaine in Trois-Rivières, and her installation entitled Un monde à raccommoder 2 was reviewed in Art Le Sabord magazine (private places). In 2006, she received the Loto-Québec grant and was also awarded the Prix Audace Télé-Québec by the Conseil de la Culture de la Mauricie. Josette Villeneuve has created several works integrating architecture and the environment. She has presented numerous solo exhibitions and regularly participates in artistic events.

PROJECT
Josette Villeneuve integrates recycled elements in her creation process. In 2003, she came upon a new type of modest material that she considers both sumptuous and strangely rich: clothing labels. Assembled and stitched together like a quilt, each label methodically collected and selected by the artist, bears the mark of a place, an occupation, a know-how. During the Symposium, the artist wants to create four flags respecting proportions and iconography but having diverted meanings. Veritable Melting pot of inscriptions from a multitude of foreign countries, where the "made in Bangladesh" and "hecho en Cuba" appear side by side, Josette Villeneuve's flags open discussions on the identity problems faced by our mutating societies in an era of globalization. They find a disturbing echo in the geopolitical state of our World during conflictual times.