{"id":8554,"date":"2012-03-24T13:10:32","date_gmt":"2012-03-24T17:10:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artoronto.ca\/?p=8554"},"modified":"2012-04-29T10:11:11","modified_gmt":"2012-04-29T14:11:11","slug":"benoit-aquin-haiti","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artoronto.ca\/?p=8554","title":{"rendered":"Benoit Aquin: Ha\u00efti"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/strong>C\u00e9r\u00e9monie II, Souvenance, Ha\u00efti, 2011. Copyright:\u00a9 Benoit Aquin \/ Courtesy of Stephen Bulger Gallery<\/p>\n

March 31 \u2013 April 28, 2012<\/strong>
\nReception: Saturday, April 14, 2\u20135 p.m.
\nSTEPHEN BULGER GALLERY<\/strong>
\n1026 Queen Street West
\nToronto, ON, M6J 1H6
\nT: 416.504.0575
\nE: info@bulgergallery.com<\/a>
\nwww.bulgergallery.com<\/a> <\/em>
\nHours: Tues\u2013Sat\u00a0 11\u20136 p.m.<\/p>\n

The gallery is pleased to present our second solo exhibition by Benoit Aquin, entitled, \u201cHa\u00efti,\u201d which documents the aftermath of the 7.0 magnitude earthquake on January 12, 2010, and the resiliency of people who have been plagued for decades with political and social unrest.<\/p>\n

On January 16, four days after the earthquake, Aquin arrived in Ha\u00efti as a volunteer with the CECI (Centre for International Studies and Cooperation). For years, Aquin has sought to document and further understand the relationship between people and their environment, and he knew that this journey would be instrumental to his personal and professional growth. Over the course of five different trips, Aquin documented what he describes as \u201ca metaphor for the cycle of life.\u201d On his first trip, he photographed at dusk where the blue-grey tone inherent to this time of day emphasized the unbearable atmosphere of death and was reminiscent of the sepia tone that pervaded Aquin\u2019s images from his \u201cChinese Dust Bowl\u201d series. The normally brimming and populated city streets of Port-au-Prince were destruction zones, with people isolated in its spaces. On his second visit, three months later, the affected atmosphere begins to dissipate and in his most recent images, scenes from carnival and of daily life depict a genuine exuberance; life celebrating a victory over death. Aquin\u2019s work has long been recognized for its formal beauty and documentary style, with attention devoted to detail and composition. In this series, his focus on colour and the vibrancy of the people in the face of a catastrophic disaster has helped him push into new formal boundaries, which verge on abstraction. His highly informed and articulate work addresses the ever shifting complexities of global concerns ranging from Nicaragua\u2019s pesticide crimes and the melting ice flows in Northern Canada to China\u2019s desertification disaster. Aquin is currently working on a project about the world food crisis.<\/p>\n

In 2008, Aquin (b. Montr\u00e9al, 1963) won the inaugural Prix Pictet for his \u201cChinese Dust Bowl\u201d series, which was published as a monograph, Far East, Far West, by les \u00e9ditions du passage in 2009. His work can be found in the prominent collections of the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Photography, Ottawa; Mus\u00e9e National de beaux-arts du Quebec, Quebec City; the National Archives of Canada, Ottawa; Mus\u00e9e des beaux-arts de Montr\u00e9al, Montr\u00e9al; and the Art Bank of Canada, Ottawa; amongst others.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

March 31 – April 28, 2012<\/strong>
\nReception: Saturday, April 14, 2–5 p.m.<\/p>\n

STEPHEN BULGER GALLERY<\/strong><\/p>\n

Over five different trips, Aquin documented what he describes as \u201ca metaphor for the cycle of life.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read more →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8556,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8554","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-listings_archive"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/artoronto.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8554","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/artoronto.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/artoronto.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artoronto.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artoronto.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8554"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/artoronto.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8554\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9971,"href":"https:\/\/artoronto.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8554\/revisions\/9971"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artoronto.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8556"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/artoronto.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8554"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artoronto.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8554"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artoronto.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8554"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}