"Sauntering Between the Cracks" is a series of works on paper combining photo collage with ink and gouache. A selection of recent work by the Canadian Artist Tanya Morand, these compositions evoke a fragmented and almost cubist architecture, layering images of different cities.
Tanya Morand explains her inspiration for "Sauntering Between the Cracks":
"Fascinated by Gordon Matta-Clark's split buildings and apertures carved out of the walls and floors of houses, I was especially intrigued by his interventions "Splitting" and "Conical Intersect" with his cuts into buildings that open closed spaces and allow light to penetrate the space.
Inspired, I began to make collages from my photos that reveal another space through the image of a first space by cutting away arabesques and cracks. Whereas Matta-Clark drew with a chain saw and sledgehammer on the raw material of buildings, I work on paper, cutting my images of buildings first with scissors and then remaking the collages in photo shop. "Sauntering Between the Cracks" is made up of fragments of my digital photo collages adhered to larger watercolour paper where I have then drawn and painted with ink and gouache. Blurring the boundaries between photo and paint, these paradoxical spaces intend to suggest an interlacing of dream, memory and reality. So often when wandering through a city, an architectural detail, or the way the light falls on a wall, may spark a memory of another place. It is as if each city has a labyrinth of memories spread beneath its facades, and wandering through, one saunters between the past and present. In these images, one may recognize glimpses of the city of Madrid and others, including the broad boulevards of Havana and the snowy streets of Quebec."
Tanya Morand's paintings, mixed media works and photographs have been exhibited extensively in Canada, in the United States, the United Kingdom and Finland. Her paintings have been shown at the National Museum of Fine Arts of Quebec as well as the Museum of Contemporary Art of Bay Saint Paul. Her artwork is included in the collections of The CPOA of the National Museum of Fine Arts of Quebec, the Inno-Centre Collection in Montreal and the Art Bank of the Canada Council for the Arts, as well as numerous private collections in Canada, the United States and Europe. In 2013, she presented the photographic installation "Here and There At the Same Time" at ART SOUTERRAIN in Montreal.
www.tanyamorand.com