Un moment précis

Un moment précis – Eric Cardinal

« Playing on patterns and their repetition, the artist’s sculptures come to us from the tradition of the grotesque; at once playful and ornamental. Light totems, confused arrangements, aimless constructions, heaps, the works of Éric Cardinal activate in us a strange state of surprise, an irreverent apprehension of household and commonplace things. »*

Eric Cardinal’s art draws from a constant rigging of the everyday object’s material and representation. The interventions are often very simple: cutting, bending, rudimentary fastening… Creating a chain of alterations along which these newly transformed elements clog and form buildups, producing shapes, textures and patterns of an unsettling familiarity. Cardinal’s work is part of this now well-established tradition in the field of sculpture that seeks to highlight the importance, as well as to emancipate, the objects’ potential through artful transformations and/or displacements. Indeed in a similar approach to sculpture, the symbolic scope of an object deserves far less attention than facts about its softness, pliability, hardness or color. In this sense, anything could end up in one of Eric Cardinal’s works, since his sculptures are hardly ever concerned with their origins in a way that would lead to some sort of acknowledgement of the inherent symbolism of their various parts.

The exhibition Un moment précis comprises a series of original works. The artist wants to thank the Conseil des arts et lettres du Québec for it’s financial support.

Mathieu Beauséjour

 Translation: Alexandre Payer

* Excerpt from the leaflet of the exhibition Comme une sorte de surgissement

Eric Cardinal was born in Drummondville in 1977. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Visual Arts from the École des arts visuels et médiatiques de l’UQÀM and a master’s degree from the Université Laval in Quebec city. Since 2004, his work has been showcased in many artist-run centers around Quebec like Axenéo7 in Gatineau (2005), L’oeil de poisson in Quebec city (2006), Sporobole in Sherbrooke (2007), le Centre d’art et de diffusion Clark in Montreal (2008), Langage plus in Alma (2009), Expression in Ste-Hyacinthe (2010), Galerie SAS (2011)… Many times recipient of grants from the Conseil des arts et des lettre du Québec, Eric Cardinal lives and work in Richmond, in the Eastern Townships.