Galerie Orange is pleased to present the recent works by photographer Laurent Guérin.

Four years after the launch of his catalogue and similarly titled exhibition Nipponga ("a view on Japan"), the Montreal-based photographer comes back full force with Samayou ("restless wandering"), a series accomplished from his prolonged travels in Japan over the past three years. From the islands of Okinawa to Tokyo and the most Northern point of the country, Guérin built up a corpus of photographs as type of visual journal. A chronicle of restless wondering where "walking, waiting and searching" are subscribed to the most natural of approaches between the artist and his subjects. Close to fifty photographs will be unveiled, including two mosaics capturing Tokyo by day and night.

His camera celebrates and desecrates at the same time all subjects, shifting with ease from the most serious to the most humoristic. Guérin's photographs are not to be mistaken as a mask eluding reality, but rather an instrument of measure and a sharp extension of his singular vision. Here the artist rejects the grey matter like one would push away categorical conventions in order to get closer to a form of dream-like truthfulness.

Laurent Guérin does not wish to dominate what he sees, neither does he want to surrender to it. Without any pre-established method, his photographs juxtapose the raw and poetic form, like the automatic gesture found in painting. Centered around the theme of liberty, these photographs are underlined by the influences in Japanese photography of the 1950s and 1960s, inspiring the artist through his pilgrimage amongst the Japanese land and its inhabitants.

_
Information : Annie Lafleur - (514) 396-6670.
Galerie Orange, 81 rue St-Paul Est (coin/corner St-Gabriel), Montréal.
Métro Champ-de-mars.

For more info on me visit my official website
www.rickyday.net