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Claude Perreault: Elizabeth 

Claude Perreault - ElizabethClaude Perreault - ElizabethClaude Perreault - ElizabethClaude Perreault - Elizabeth
Claude Perreault - ElizabethClaude Perreault - ElizabethClaude Perreault - ElizabethClaude Perreault - Elizabeth
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Claude Perreault
Elizabeth
January 9 - February 14, 2009

Claude Perreault's upcoming exhibition, Elizabeth, explores the artist's long-standing fascination with glamour, while playfully subverting idealized representations within celebrity culture. Elizabeth enacts a complex train of mediated signification. Perreault has chosen to revisit Queen Elizabeth I through cinema and television portrayals by celebrity actors (such as Judi Dench in Shakespeare In Love or Cate Blanchett in Elizabeth).

At first glance, Perreault's portraits might appear to be expertly crafted oil paintings, but closer inspection reveals each picture plane to be entirely comprised of collaged erotic images from gay magazines. Displaying an inspiring sense of humor and incredible technical precision, Perreault provokes reconsiderations of the construction and functions of desire within contemporary society.

bio

Claude Perreault returns to the pre-digital material processes and subversive potentials within avant-garde collage practices of the twentieth century. Drawing primarily from gay print erotica, he selects, cuts, archives and sometimes destroys pre-existing documents, rather than replicating them electronically. Pop-culture icons are often portrayed within works that are consistently camp, queer and kitsch-like. Perreault currently lives and works in the city of Montreal.

Supported in part by the Quebéc Conseil des Arts