François Xavier Saint-Pierre: The Spiders and the Bees

The Spiders and the Bees is a survey exhibition by French-Canadian, Venice based artist François Xavier Saint-Pierre, including his most recent body of work following a residency at the Villa Medici in Rome.

Examining our ability to see, process and recognize the visual forms of the past in a visually over-saturated and ‘post-historical’ era, Saint-Pierre’s work, with its summary paint handling, privileges perception. His approach centres on historical dislocation and perceptual ambiguity and a preoccupation with fragmentation, seriality and the metonymic function of emblematic forms. Using classical architectural and sculptural forms as a starting point, he creates hypothetical landscapes that evoke the history of painting while teetering on the edge of legibility.

Addressing the legacy of modernist painting and the persistence of classical tropes, this exhibition examines the myths, continuities and fractures of Art History's model of artistic innovation and progress. It leads us to consider, also, how certain cultural forms are repeated for political use. Inspired by Jonathan Swift’s 18th century allegory of a battle between the ancients of Antiquity (the bees) and the moderns of the Enlightenment (the spiders), the exhibition offers an evocative look at how we negotiate between an approach to innovation that is inspired by what has come before and one that favours the supremacy of the new.

Read insights into François Xavier Saint-Pierre's artistic processes and exhibition development of The Spiders and the Bees in IN THE WORKS: François Xavier Saint-Pierre.

François Xavier Saint-Pierre is a Canadian painter who received his BFA from Concordia University in Montreal, where he studied under Guido Molinari and Yves Gaucher and his MFA from the University of Waterloo. He was a finalist in the 2006 RBC Canadian Painting Competition and has participated in international residencies in the UK, in Italy, where he was an artist in residence at the French Academy in Rome, and in the middle of the Baltic Sea on a remote island with more sheep than people. He has exhibited across Canada and internationally.

David Jager is a writer and musician living in Muskoka. He was art reviewer for NOW magazine for over ten years, and did several cover features and reviews on contemporary artists for Canadian Art. He is currently a freelance curator, art writer, gallery owner and academic. He also writes rock musicals.

Images at top: (left) François Xavier Saint-Pierre, Capital. Oil on panel, 83 X 74 cm, 2017. (right) François Xavier Saint-Pierre, Capital in Evening Light. Oil on linen, 83 X 74 cm, 2017.

The Spiders and the Bees

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