Marc Séguin ROADKILLS, SKULLS + POPES

Marc Seguin’s fierce, provocative paintings will be on view at the Charest-Weinberg Gallery from November 20 – February 1, Tuesday – Saturday 11am – 6pm, and by appointment. The exhibition will inaugurate the Charest-Weinberg Gallery in Miami, at 250 NW 23rd Street, Space 408 and will feature Seguin’s impassioned figurative paintings from the past year. A local press reception will be held Thursday, November 20, from 7:30 – 10:30pm. The gallery will be open during its regular business hours throughout the week of Art Basel Miami Beach and a reception for the artist will be held Friday, December 5 from 7 pm – 10 pm. On Saturday, December 13th, the gallery will participate in Miami Design District / Wynwood Gallery Night from 7 -10pm.

Marc Seguin will exhibit paintings from two series, Roadkill and Popes. Both series explore the human condition as it intersects with the forces of contemporary culture. The paintings in Roadkill combine drawn and painted images of human beings with salvaged, taxidermied animals affixed to the painting’s surfaces. The Roadkill paintings convey a sense of both violence and existential mystery, with isolated human beings in confrontation with predatory creatures. Blood is spilled as the three-dimensional coyotes sink their teeth into young men and women rendered in tones of gray wash and charcoal line on neutral grounds. The figures exhibit a peculiar anomie in the face of the vicious attacks they undergo. Some of the figures stand, others lie under their attackers, and yet others appear to tumble or fall through the air. Suspension and even grace mark these images of the mundane invaded by the instinctual. The sense of social commentary in the Roadkill series is inevitable. The viewer reads Seguin’s paintings as x-rays of power relations and the lurking threat in contemporary life. The four paintings titled i love america and america love me echo a similarly named 1974 Joseph Beuys performace piece, with striking images seemingly drawn from current events: the bikini-wearing beauty queen with a wolf marking his territory, the wounded gunman, the falling disaster victim, and the soldier dancing with his animal companion.

In Popes, Seguin creates a series of subversive portraits of past and present leaders of the Roman Catholic Church. As in the Roadkill series, Seguin works with a painterly directness that paradoxically creates a haunting presence, part photograph and part phantom. Seguin’s Popes are based on the official Vatican portraits, but are rendered in tar and feathers. This implicit critique contrasts to their iconic presence and massive size, about 9 feet tall. The images along with their titles, Infallibility, followed by of the name of a 20th or early 21st century pope, suggest that the artist is contrasting the power of papal dogma with the papcy’s vulnerability to criticism both inside and outside of the Church. Seguin has also created a number of smaller studies in oil and charcoal. The washy grisaille busts are supplemented by color in selected areas of their vestments. The result is a series of images of old men, solitary and fading into the pale ground on which they appear, weakly energized by the trappings of their office.

Marc Seguin, who lives and works in Montreal and New York, has exhibited his work extensively at venues in Canada and the United States. His work is in the Francois Pinault Collection, Paris, and Museè d’arte contemporain de Montreal, and other public and private collections.

The Charest-Weinberg Gallery will publish Roadkills, Skulls + Popes: Marc Seguin, with essays by James D. Campbell, David Hunt and an epilogue by Francois Odermatt.