Manuel Mathieu

Last updated
Manuel Mathieu
Manuel Mathieu in 2023.jpg
BornOctober 9th 1986
Port-au-Prince, Haïti
NationalityHaitian, Canadian
EducationGoldsmith University, London
Website https://www.manuelmathieu.com/

Manuel Mathieu (born October 1986) is a Haitian contemporary visual artist recognized as a painter of abstract works that suggest figurative forms within ambiguous spaces. Mathieu draws from Haitian visual cultures and from Western art movements such as expressionism [1] and existentialism. His practice weaves together formal techniques, Haitian contemporary art movements to explore phenomenologies of human relations as they relate to power dynamics, loyalty, love, nature, subjective experience, history writing. [2] Mathieu’s work reflects on the intersection of individual and historical identity, examining how personal histories resonate within larger socio-political contexts. [2]

Contents

Early life and education

Manuel Mathieu was born Ayizan Pierre Manuel Mathieu on October 9, 1986, in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Both his parents are Haitian and raised their children with high expectations of educational achievements. His father Philippe Mathieu is an agronomist [3] while his mother has a Phd in psychology. He has two younger sisters that both reside in Canada. When he was 15, he got closer to his cousin and groundbreaking Haitian artist Mario Benjamin. He often went to his house, a space full of magazines, art catalogues, and sculptures. There, at Benjamin’s house, he became acquainted with artists that influenced his own work, trailblazers such as Mona Hatoum and Clyfford Still. [4]

When he was 19, Mathieu moved to Quebec, into his grandmother's house who had emigrated to Canada with her children, without her husband, a colonel under Jean Claude Duvalier's dictatorial regime. His parents associated Mathieu's artistic exploration to his struggles. When he moved to Blainville, Quebec, he began painting, as well as doing photography and video art more intensely with the support of his grandmother. [2]

In 2016, he obtained a Master of Fine Arts at Goldsmiths, University of London, England. [2] Since his graduation, Manuel has become a sought-after artist with international representation by art galleries Hugues Charbonneau, in Montreal, Maruani Mercier in Brussels, Belgium, and HDM gallery in Beijing, China and London, United Kingdom. [5]

Artistic influence and style

In 2015, one year into his postgraduate program at Goldsmiths, Mathieu was involved in a near-fatal motorbike hit-and-run. He suffered a severe concussion, facial trauma, fractures of his jaw, and short-term memory loss. This experience influenced the subject of his MFA thesis show “One future.” [6] After his physical recovery and no more visible traces of his accident, he wanted to express what lingered innately. He found a correlation between his invisible trauma and that of his country after the Duvalier dictatorship. “One Future” explored the Duvalier regime in order to address the national trauma that was scarcely being addressed in collective settings. The accident also drew him closer to his family and consolidated his friendships. Many of Manuel’s portraits are of his immediate circle. [2]

Deconstructive processes shape the overarching themes of Mathieu’s work, as he develops an visual language that pushes the confines of representational depictions and what is considered figurative. [7] He extrapolates abstract formal techniques to portray historical Haitian figures and subject matters, creating a visual language that indicates his point-of-view through interpretative considerations. The textural, compositional, and thematic transparency in Mathieu’s work underscore his practice and deep concern to uncover the power and spiritual structures behind modes of thinking, of behaving and manifesting realities. [1] Recent critical essays have highlighted his ability to blend texture, composition, and transparency, emphasizing how his practice reveals the power dynamics and spiritual structures underlying human thought, behavior, and reality. [8]


His paintings often re-stage archived materials such as videos and photographs to bring forth the fact of erasure, of invisibility and the consequent curiosity and questions that arise in the face of narrational voids. His work interrogates the gaps and silences in historical narratives, particularly those imposed on the Black diaspora through colonialism and marginalization. [9] This approach has been celebrated in several recent articles where critics have praised Mathieu’s ability to bring forth narratives that question official histories while amplifying collective memories of trauma and resistance. [10]

As a multidisciplinary artist, he draws from various musical practices— jazz improvisation and repetition— and material processes that allow him to expand and diversify his approach on a subject matter that he explores years on end. [2] Mathieu consistently refers Haitian visual cultures of religious hybridity such as in The Poto-Mitan movement, ecology, nature as it appears in other movements like Saint Soleil, which further broaden his multidisciplinary approach . [5]

Reviews of his exhibitions, particularly those showcasing Pendulum, have noted the project’s emotional resonance and conceptual depth. The work has been described as a critical turning point in Mathieu’s career, reflecting his expanded exploration of history, trauma, and spiritual resilience. These exhibitions, held at prestigious venues like The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery, Toronto, and the Museum of Contemporary Art of Miami, have solidified Mathieu’s reputation as an artist who transcends traditional forms and themes, creating work that resonates with both personal and collective histories. [11]

Drawings and other media

Mathieu's official website, https://www.manuelmathieu.com/, serves as a portal to his multifaceted artistic practice. Beyond painting, Mathieu explores various media, including drawing, textile, video, and installation art. His drawings, often created on a smaller scale than his paintings, have been instrumental in triggering breakthroughs in his painting technique, offering a space for experimentation and the development of new ideas. [12]

His short films push the boundaries of conceptual narration in his perpetual study of how beliefs, and history informs our perspectives and our reactions to political and/or intimate events. One of Mathieu’s most celebrated film projects, Pendulum (2023), exemplifies this multidisciplinary approach. The project has been exhibited internationally and has garnered significant recognition, earning Mathieu the Best Short Film Award from the International Festival of Films on Art. Pendulum has been featured in major exhibitions in venues such as the Power Plant Contemporary Art, the Gallery TPW in Toronto, the Saint-Louis Art Museum, the Perez Art Museum in Miami and the Museum of Contemporary Art Miami. [6]

Selected exhibitions

Solo

Group

Collections and awards

Public and Private Collections

USA

CANADA

LEBANON

CHINA

  • Start Museum
  • Cloud CAC
  • Contemporary Gallery Kunming
  • Longlati Foundation
  • Luokung Technology Cor

ISRAEL

  • Igal Ahouvi Collection

Awards

Related Research Articles

Jean-Paul Mousseau was a Quebec artist. He was a student of Paul-Émile Borduas, a member of the Automatist group and a founding member of the Association of Non-Figurative Artists of Montreal.

Claude Tousignant is a Canadian artist. Tousignant is considered to be an important contributor to the development of geometric abstraction in Canada. He masterly used alternating values of complementary colours in innovative ways in his circle/target paintings.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fernand Leduc</span> Canadian artist (1916–2014)

Fernand Leduc was a Canadian abstract expressionist painter and a major figure in the Quebec contemporary art scene in the 1940s and 1950s. During his 50-year career, Leduc participated in many exhibitions in Canada and France. He was born in Viauville, Montreal, Quebec.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal</span> Art museum in Quebec, Canada

The Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal (MACM) is a contemporary art museum in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. It is located on the Place des festivals in the Quartier des spectacles and is part of the Place des Arts complex.

David Blatherwick (born 1960) is a Canadian artist and educator.

Fernand Toupin was a Québécois abstract painter best known as a first-generation member of the avant-garde movement known as Les Plasticiens. Like other members of the group, his shaped paintings drew upon the tradition of geometric abstraction, and he cited Mondrian as a forerunner. In 1959, Toupin began working with a more lyrical, though abstract, way of painting. The last decade of his career saw his return to geometric abstraction. Like Jean-Paul Mousseau, Toupin created works which lay outside the standard boundaries of art such as his stage sets for ballets.

Bill Vazan is a Canadian artist, known for land art, sculpture, painting and photography. His work has been exhibited in North America and internationally.

Alain Paiement is a Canadian artist. His work is mainly made from photography in form of installations, sculptures, and photomontage. His themes are related to geography, topography and architecture and mainly concerned by the construction of vision. A photo of the French artist Pierre Estable's apartment titled "Living Chaos" has been exhibited at the Galerie Clark from May 10 to June 17, 2001.

BGL is a Canadian artist collective composed of Jasmin Bilodeau, Sébastien Giguère and Nicolas Laverdière. The artist collective have been active since 1996 since completing their studies together at Laval University in Québec City, Canada.

Nancy Petry is a Canadian artist known for innovation within the field of painting, photography, film and performance art. As one of the first Canadian artists to paint in the style of lyrical abstraction, her work was featured at the Commonwealth Institute, at the Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal and in a National Gallery of Canada touring exhibition. She was also instrumental in establishing the Association des graveurs du Québec and contributed to the success of the Montreal alternative art cooperative, Véhicule Art. In 2015 the "Nancy Petry Award" was instituted.

Carol Wainio is a Canadian painter. Her work, known for its visual complexity and monochrome color palette, has been exhibited in major art galleries in Canada, the U.S., Europe and China. She has won multiple awards, including the Governor General's Award in Visual and Media Arts.

Peter Krausz is a Romanian-born Canadian artist. Throughout his career, he worked within the fields of painting, drawing, installation, and photography and, since 1970, exhibited in museums and galleries across Canada, the United States, and Europe. He is best known for large-scale landscape paintings of the Mediterranean.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">John A. Schweitzer</span> Canadian artist

John A. Schweitzer is a Canadian artist known for mixed-media collage incorporating text. He was awarded the Queen Elizabeth II Golden Jubilee Medal in 2002, first place at the international exhibition Schrift und Bild in der modernen Kunst in 2004, and an Honorary Doctor of Laws from The University of Western Ontario in 2011. He was elected to the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts (RCA) in 2003 and to the Ontario Society of Artists (OAS) in 2006. His work is found in the collections of the National Gallery of Canada, Canadian Museum of History, Art Gallery of Ontario, Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal, Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Glenbow Museum, Winnipeg Art Gallery, Beaverbrook Art Gallery, The Rooms Art Gallery of Newfoundland and Labrador, and the National September 11 Memorial & Museum.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Philip Surrey</span> Canadian painter (1910–1990)

Philip Surrey LL. D. was a Canadian artist known for his figurative scenes of Montreal. A founding member of the Contemporary Arts Society, and Montreal Men's Press Club, Surrey was part of Montreal's cultural elite during the late 1930s and 1940s. In recognition of his artistic accomplishment he was elected to the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts, awarded a Canadian Centennial Medal in 1967 and was appointed to the Order of Canada in 1982.

Nell Tenhaaf is a Canadian artist, teacher, writer and feminist.

Adam Basanta is a Montreal-based artist and experimental composer whose practice investigates manifestations of technology as a meeting point of concurrent and overlapping systems. He uses various media and creates participatory and multi-sensory performances.

Angela Grauerholz is a German-born Canadian photographer, graphic designer and educator living in Montreal.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lise Gervais</span> Canadian painter and sculptor

Lise Gervais (1933–1998) was a Canadian abstract painter and sculptor. She was president of the Conseil des Artistes Peintres du Quebec in 1983 and 1984.

Francine Savard is a Canadian artist whose paintings and installations are grounded in the Plasticien tradition. Her practice explores relationships between language and visual art. Besides painting, Savard has a career as a graphic designer.

Karen Tam is a Canadian artist and curator who focuses on the constructions and imaginations of cultures and communities through installations in which she recreates Chinese restaurants, karaoke lounges, opium dens, curio shops and other sites of cultural encounters. She is based in Montreal, Quebec.

References

  1. 1 2 3 Caroline, Elbaor. "Why London Artist Manuel Mathieu Is on His Way Up". Artnet News. Retrieved 25 May 2019.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Spicer, Emily. "Manuel Mathieu: 'Life experience sometimes forces you to see things that you wouldn't otherwise have seen'". Studio International. the Studio International Foundation. Retrieved 15 May 2019.
  3. ↑ Grogg, Patricia. "In Haiti, April Showers Don't Always Bring Flowers". IPS. Retrieved 18 May 2019.
  4. ↑ Roffino, Sara. "Fast-Rising Painter Manuel Mathieu Creates Deeply Personal Work". Galerie Magazine. Retrieved 15 May 2019.
  5. 1 2 Rianna Jade, Parker. "'We Are Rebellious Souls': Manuel Mathieu Imagines a Caribbean of the Future". Frieze. Retrieved 5 September 2019.
  6. 1 2 Villar-Pérez, Raquel. "Manuel Mathieu: reflections on abstract painting and trauma". AFRICANAH. Retrieved 20 May 2019.
  7. ↑ Mercier, Maruani. "Press release: Manuel Mathieu, The Spell on You". Artnet news. Retrieved 20 May 2019.
  8. ↑ Gagosian. Social works II: Manuel Mathieu The Delusion of Power https://gagosian.com/quarterly/2021/11/29/essay-social-works-ii-manuel-mathieu-delusion-power/
  9. ↑ Tiwani, Contemporary. "Press Release: Manuel Mathieu, Truth To Power" (PDF). Artforum. Retrieved 20 May 2019.
  10. ↑ Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, 2020. MANUEL MATHIEU: SURVIVANCE Paintings of powerful, haunting, irrepressible beauty.https://artguide.artforum.com/uploads/guide.005/id24100/press_release.pdf
  11. ↑ Toronto Biennial of Art, 2024. https://torontobiennial.org/exhibition/pendulum/
  12. ↑ |date=2015 |publisher=Cambridge Scholars Publ. |pages=151 |isbn=9781443882477 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=UofWCgAAQBAJ&dq=manuel+mathieu+music&pg=PA151 |accessdate=20 May 2019}}
  13. ↑ "The Other Side of Now: Foresight in Contemporary Caribbean Art". Pérez Art Museum Miami. Retrieved 25 July 2019.
  14. ↑ Nesbitt, Sarah. "Over My Black Body at Galerie de l'UQAM, Montreal". Akimboblog. Akimbo.
  15. ↑ "COMMUNIQUÉ : nous sommes ici, d'ici : l'art contemporain des noirs canadiens" (PDF). MBAM. Retrieved 15 March 2020.
  16. ↑ "Spooky - Manuel Mathieu". 27 April 2020.
  17. ↑ "Mathieu, Manuel". Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec. 27 April 2020.
  18. ↑ https://lefifa.com/en/
  19. ↑ "2020 Sobey Art Award Increases Cash Prize for Longlist Artists 25 exceptional". National Gallery of Canada. 27 April 2020.
  20. ↑ "fig-2 open call winner: Manuel Mathieu". Art Fund. 27 April 2020.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.