Guillaume Simoneau
at Bonaventure

EXHIBIT

Experimental Lake

Near the tourist information center (boardwalk) | 93 Avenue de Port-Royal | Bonaventure

Guillaume Simoneau, Montreal, Québec | simoneauguillaume.com

Born in Québec in 1978, Guillaume Simoneau lives and works in Montreal. His photos have been exhibited both in Canada and internationally.

They have been presented in settings that include VU Photo (Québec), the Stephen Bulger Gallery in Toronto, in Mexico as part of a traveling exhibit in collaboration with Occurrence, in Russia and at the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago. His series Love and War is part of a publication by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMoMA), issued by Dewi Lewis Publishing in the United Kingdom and nominated for a number of prestigious awards. The series Experimental Lake will be the subject of a book published by MACK in 2017. Guillaume Simoneau is present in several collections, including those of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, England; the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; and the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago.

EXHIBIT AT RENCONTRES

Experimental Lake

Canada’s reputation as a caring country suffered immensely when funding for scientific research, designed to benefit all nations, was cancelled under the last Conservative government. Guillaume Simoneau’s photographs are like signposts in the wilderness. They are not memorial in nature but sing nature’s praises alongside human handiwork.

A fugitive storyline is to be pieced together by us out of the folklore of the moment, wherein the artist and we, his viewers, find ourselves on the cusp and hungry for answers. This compendium of images is unhinged from the moorings of conventional narrative readings. They speak of travel, pilgrimage, epiphany and discovery with a simple, selfless stoicism. Time of day, experiments out on the water, and scientific equipment all suggest an itinerary which is at once mysterious and immanent, pungent and rich.

Simoneau has stated about the project that “this body of work moves away from the omnipresent vanity found all around us these days and focuses, at once, on the outside; on the idea of common good and necessary evil. The resulting work is presented not as a series about the Experimental Lakes Area (ELA) but as a compendium of images produced on location at the ELA and therefore infused by its spirit and beauty.”