User:Bellemare Michel Luc/sandbox

Professional Abstract Artist and Philosopher,

(Born: October 23rd, 1975---) Canada.


 * Artistic Style: Critical Abstraction and/or Color-Realism


 * Period: Critical Abstractionism/Color-Realism

Currently based in Canada ---Notables:


 * First Métis Aboriginal artist to be a member of the faculty of the visual arts department at the University of Ottawa since its formation.

-- Short Bio
 * Author of the principles of Critical Abstraction and/or Color-Realism.

In his work, Michel Luc Bellemare explores the possibilities of critical abstraction, i.e. color-realism, which is a new form of abstract art designed to articulate something concrete and meaningful about our contemporary post-industrial society via the utilization of pure abstraction painting to probe and critique socio-economic issues. Moving beyond abstract-expressionism and the litany of neo-abstract-expressionisms, Michel’s work attempts to establish a new lexical interpretation of pure abstraction, capitalizing on its multi-dimensional nature by utilizing its radical subjectivity to say something meaningful about contemporary society through the re-interpretation of the tenets of abstract art and abstract painting. The fundamental premise of his art is the notion that “abstract art is the continuation of philosophy via other means. Abstract art is real actions that revolutionize conventional standards, specifically conventional practices and aesthetic standards through critical analysis, critical critique, creative reinterpretation and constructive innovation of outdated standardized art-forms and conventional ways of doing and seeing things”. Moreover, essential to his artistic practice is the examination of his specific situation and position in the world, which is increasingly associated and related to abstraction, i.e. abstract art and abstract painting. The materiality of his painting articulates and embodies the physical and the mental outcome of his individual search for understanding. As Michel states, “my work is about self-understanding and it arises from my attempts to engage social, cultural, and political aspects of modern post-industrial society within the confines of the painterly surface. Contemporary abstract art requires that an artist absorbs the fundamental principle ‘great art by any means necessary’ in his or her constitution if he or she wishes to construct a body of work that transcends and extrapolates the parameters of traditional aesthetic sensibilities, institutions and art practices. Contemporary abstract art is resistance and resilience to the status quo”.

Born in Canada, Michel Luc Bellemare is a professional critical abstraction artist of Métis Aboriginal descent. He is the author of 3 books (Artworks), one of which titled: Color- Realism: (The Essence of Color and Reality) is in the National Gallery of Canada’s library and the others, i.e. Nomologism and The Machine, are housed in the National Library of Canada. Moreover, Michel has exhibited internationally and his artwork can be found in various museums etc. He has taught both at the University of Ottawa and Carleton University in various capacities as a professor. _________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Education:

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 * Doctor of Philosophy, Hill University (U.S.A.),Visual Arts, (2010).
 * Doctor of Philosophy, Carleton University, Communication (ABD), (2004).
 * Master of Arts, Carleton University, Communication, (2001).
 * Bachelor of Arts, Honors, Trent University, Cultural Studies, (2000).
 * Assessment Certificate, University of British Columbia, (1997).
 * Diploma, Loyalist College, Assessment and Appraisal, (1997).

Studio Apprenticeship:

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 * A summer semester studio apprenticeship in 1999 with American Realist painter David Bierk in Peterborough Ontario.

Memberships:

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 * A member of the Artist of Eastern Ontario Association (AEO), Ottawa.
 * A member of a non-profit artist-run organization gallery, Gallery 101, Ottawa.
 * Membre du centre des arts de la culture patrimoine de Chelsea, Quebec.

Grant Accomplishments: _________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
 * 1 Ontario Arts Council Exhibition Grant (2015).
 * 1 Articipate Project Endowment, Artist of Eastern Ontario Association (2014).
 * 1 Articipate Project Endowment, Artist of Eastern Ontario Association (2012).
 * 3 Ontario Grant Scholarships (OGS) (2002-2003-2004).
 * 4 Millennium Scholarships (1999-2000-2001-2002).
 * 1 Carleton University Graduate Studies Entrance Scholarship. (2000).
 * 1 Trent University Entrance Scholarship (1997).

The Primary Principles of Critical Abstraction:


 * 1. Color is as real as reality gets.

What this means is that color is the fundamental concept and/or structure of reality. If reality is a language, i.e. a series of languages from alpha to omega, it is by the concept of color that a language exists, namely without a division of color there are no symbols and/or language characters for that matter. It is the initial division of color, i.e. the concept of color,that allows reality to present itself as a thought-concept and to be conceptualized. There is no outside the concept of color; hence the notion that color is as real as reality gets as it is the most abstract concept. As well, this means that abstract art must communicate something concrete about everyday life, it must question social norms and our traditional concepts about art.


 * 2. Everything is abstract, conceptual to the end; reality, materiality, is but variations in degrees of abstraction based on the concept of color, and this fundamental color-concept is gray in origin, indeterminate, ambiguous, and pure deception.

What this means is that there is nothing outside the mental faculty, what reality is exists only in consciousness, initially as abstract color and nothing else. What we understand of the world outside via the human senses is conceptual through and through. What we touch, smell, taste, see, hear are concepts, abstract concepts that are processed and comprehended only in consciousness.


 * 3. Art is real actions that revolutionize conventional standards, specifically conventional practice and aesthetic standard(s) through creative critique, re-interpretation and constructive innovation of outdated standardized art-forms and conventional ways of doing and seeing things. As a result, art is the continuation of philosophy via other means.

What this means is that today avant-garde art should attempt to reinvest the individual with power as the arbiters of what constitutes art and more importantly what constitutes a museum/art object. Color-realism attempts via avant-garde art to transfer power and technology from the social worker/bureaucrat to the artist and the individual. Color-realism is an avant-garde, a re-interpretation of past avant-gardes. Color-realism is the inheritor of the avant-garde spirit that is never extinguished. For color-realism, the revolution of everyday life that was present in past avant-garde movements has not been extinguished; it has simply been re-configured at the micro-levels of everyday life. True, the total revolution of everyday life that past avant-garde movements, automatist revolution etc., have attempted to bring forth is no longer an option, meaning that a total-refusal of the status quo is problematic and impossible. Notwithstanding micro-revolutions of everyday life, small insurrections, micro-refusals in the micro recesses of everyday life continue to persists and this is where the avant-garde spirit has re-configured itself. Whether it be the refusal to drive a gasoline car via an electric car or the purchase of pure abstraction painting in favor of a landscape, there are micro-revolutions and micro-refusals taking place across the socio-economic spectrum of society whereupon the individual is regaining its autonomy and freedom by its small everyday acts of refusal, usurpation and re-configuration of the dominant traditional conventions of everyday life.


 * 4. Meaning and/or Value in Art and/or of an art-from is based on structure of feeling.

Color-Realism is about constructing a structure of feeling via an artwork, where thought and feeling are one, i.e. where specific thoughts generate specific feelings and specific feelings generate specific thoughts via the artwork. A critique of Rothko is that his paintings although yearning to instill specific feelings in the viewer, i.e. feelings of tragedy, doom, ecstasy, the religious experience etc., never achieved this end due to the fact that Rothko never constructed his paintings with a structure of feeling in mind, although this is exactly what he wished to achieve via his artwork. Consequently, his artworks remained open-ended, cryptic and open to a multitude of interpretations and sensations, meaningless, and currently the sum of contemporary abstract art continues to be trapped and spellbound in this outmoded type of nonsensical creation. Rothko’s artwork did not achieve the desired effect that he so longed for. Rothko did not see the possibilities of titles as an artistic medium to guide viewers to specific sensations, experiences and thought-forms, i.e. concepts. In contrast, color-realism remaining true to the emotional power of pure abstraction, first discovered with abstract expressionism, takes pure abstraction to the next level, a heighted level, designing specific structures of feeling through artefacts that can allow the viewer a basis and/or context for the manifestation of specific feelings and specific thoughts, which is the way to meaningful communication, the intrinsic purpose of art. Moreover, this is the realism of this specific form of pure abstraction painting called color-realism, where titles structure thought as visual images structure feeling and vice versa. This is the different between old abstract art and the new abstract art.

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 * 5. Great Art by any means necessary.

Artist Statement:

What is abstraction? Abstraction is a thinking and/or a pushing of reality, interior and exterior, to the Nth degree, where all figuration and concepts become indistinct, blurred, mosaic in nature. Pure abstraction is where all differentiations cease and a totality of colors, i.e. a gray area and/or mosaic, is created capable of multiple meanings and interpretations. This is the essence of pure abstraction painting. The aim, I’ve set out through abstraction is to influence the way people see and think about art and what abstract art consists of. This is a matter of artistic reconfiguration and that the creation of a new form of abstraction. This new evolutionary art-form is critical abstraction. The primary critique of 99% of all contemporary pure abstraction painting in the last 60 years, i.e. abstract-expressionisms, is that its images and its titles are merely decorative artifice & self-indulgent existentialist non-sense, devoid of meaning, devoid of social or educational elements that speak to this contemporary age. Sixty years after its initial splash, today's abstract-expressionism and neo-abstract-expressionists are exercising an obsolete useless lexicon that is in many ways redundant and incapable of describing anything substantial and relevant to its viewer's existence in this post-industrial age. Subsequently, Color-Realism, or specifically critical abstraction, is an evolutionary and revolutionary development of the Ab-Ex corpse, a new lexical interpretation of pure abstraction, capitalizing on its multi-dimensionalism by utilizing its radical subjectivity to say something meaningful and relevant about contemporary society, which speaks not immaterial nonsense but pragmatic material facts about current sociological, philosophical, economic and human conditions etc. As a result, through my artistic practice, i.e. the medium of oil painting, I am reconfiguring the dominant ideas on abstract art and abstraction that were first introduced in the early to mid 20th century. An initial breakthrough occurred in 2009 with the publication of my book: Color-Realism, acquired by the National Gallery of Canada for its library. Only 3 books were ever made as the book was designed to negate capitalist-commodification and the capitalist system by remaining a unique rarity, a unique object/artifact. The book’s main thesis is that color is as real as reality gets. Color is the basic language upon which all other languages develop. And it is through pure abstraction painting that this fundamental language of color is put into motion and communicated, as the basic concern in pure abstraction painting is communication, i.e. using color and how color communicates to effectively doing things with, both psychologically and physically. Without color there is no form, no concepts or senses as it is color, i.e. the division between colors, which allows basic concepts to develop. For example, one cannot think of a square without color, it is impossible to think of a color-less square, what this means is that color is a precondition to our ability as humans’ to think, our basic concepts of the world around us are based first and foremost on the concept of color and the divisions between color. And pure abstraction painting reminds us of this fact. In sum, my artistic practice aims to revolutionize the way people see, think and relate to modern abstract painting and the central concepts of abstract art. It has been said that “philosophers have only interpreted the world, the point is to change it” elaborating on this premise I state that “abstract art is the continuation of philosophy via other means. Abstract art is real actions that revolutionized conventional standards, specifically conventional practices and aesthetic standards through critical analysis, critical critique, creative re-interpretation and constructive innovation of outdated standardized art-forms and conventional ways of doing and seeing things”. Contemporary abstract art requires that an artist absorbs the fundamental principle ‘great art by any means necessary’ in his or her constitution if he or she wishes to construct a body of work that transcends and extrapolates the parameters of traditional aesthetic sensibilities, institutions and art practices. Contemporary abstract art is resistance and resilience to the status quo.

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Artistic Style: Critical Abstraction

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 * Michel is most famous for the supra-impasto technique, an artform of thickly applied paint, the likes of which are totally new. Tom Thomson, Jean-Paul Riopelle and Vincent Van Gogh were all considered impastoist but they never extended the technique. Michel has expanded on this method of painting and brought it to extreme, where paint is applied so thick on the canvas that it protrudes and swells the canvas surface towards a 3 dimensional abstract image. If abstract art to date is about creating a flat surface without perspective or image, Michel's artwork denies the flat surface of past pure abstraction painting. His paintings deny the flat two-dimensional surface in favor of a rough undulating abstractive surface.  His pure abstraction paintings expand outwards from the canvas manifesting a different type of abstraction, a highly textual 3-dimensional pure form of abstraction painting that has never been attempted before in the history of modern painting.
 * In addition, he utilizes a new type of brush stroke that is called the bee sting brushstroke, where paint is applied so thick that it forms a stinger that extends from the canvas surface akin to the stinger of a bumble bee, where the paint appears in a point-like fashion. Moreover, via an added layer of iridescent glitter his paintings radiate, and this added dimension gives his paintings multi-dimensional movement in the sense that as the viewer walks around the painting the colors of the picture actually change, change the lighting and so does the colors of the picture. In this regard, the viewer is intimately connected in the completion of an artwork, in the sense that Michel's artefacts require the viewer in order to achieve total completion. Michel has moved painting from a static image to that of a dynamic image, which is a first for modern art. With the techniques of color-realism the abstract image is now dynamic and multi-dimensional, rather than static and two-dimensional as previous art has been.  Former artists have alluded to the multi-dimensional quality of color and pigment but this was not realized until now; consequently Michel's art-form is historically important to modern contemporary art.

Solo Exhibitions:

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 * May, 2016 "Micro-Revolution". Galerie Eugene-Racette. Ottawa, Solo Show. (Evaluated by committee).
 * Jan.-Feb., 2015 "Point/Counter-Point: (Homage to Matisse and Picasso)". Shenkman Arts Centre. Ottawa, Solo Show. (Evaluated by committee)
 * Oct.-Nov., 2014 "Critical Abstraction and Radical Transcendence: (Transcending Systemic Collusion in Canada's and Ottawa's Art World)". Sienna Gallery, Ottawa Region, Solo Show. (Curated)
 * Nov.-Dec, 2013 “Politics, Philosophy and Critical Abstraction”. Art Flow Gallery, Chinatown Ottawa, Solo Show. (Curator Hang Hu).
 * February, 2013 “Democracy/Totalitarianism”. Shenkman Arts Centre, Ottawa, Solo Show. (evaluated by committee)
 * April, 2013, “Beyond AB-EX there is only Color-Realism”. Gallery 115, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Solo Show. (evaluated by committee)
 * October-August-September, 2012. “Pressed Into Action”. @Pressed Gallery, Ottawa, Solo Show. (Curated.)
 * July, 2012. “The Post-Modern Condition: (Fragmentation, Juxtaposition, Contradiction)”. South Keys Gallery, Ottawa, Solo Show. (evaluated by. committee)
 * December-January 2011-2012. “Clairvoyance”,  South Keys Gallery, Ottawa. Solo Show. (evaluated by committee).
 * March, 2011. Big Trouble in Little China. Raw Sugar Café and Gallery, Ottawa. Solo Show. Curated.
 * January, May, June July, August, 2011. Series of Commissioned Art Shows, Starbucks Gallery Spaces, Ottawa. Solo Shows (evaluated by committee).
 * Sept., 2010. “Pixie Dust”. Orange Gallery, Ottawa,  Solo Show. (Curated.)
 * July, 2010. “Color and Reality”. The Snapdragon Gallery, Ottawa. Solo Show. (Curated).
 * October, 2001. “Neo-Pop”.  Aesthetic Factory Gallery. Aesthetic Factory, London, England. Solo Show.  (evaluated by committee)
 * June, 2000. “Power/Knowledge”. Show Gallery, Queen Street West, Toronto. Solo Show. (Curated)
 * April, 1999. “Color-Spectrum”. Art-Scape Gallery, Peterborough, Ontario.  Solo Show.  (evaluated by committee)

Artist-Run-Centers Exhibitions:

(evaluated by committee)
 * November, 1997.  “Autumn Colors”. Arts Umbrella Public Gallery,  Peterborough, On.  Solo Show. (evaluated by committee)
 * February, 1997. “Spray-Paint and Neo-Expressionism Dreams”. Arts Umbrella Public Gallery, Peterborough On. Solo Show.

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Group Exhibitions: _________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
 * January 2014. "Carleton University Biennale." Carleton University Art Gallery, Ottawa, Group Show. (Curated).
 * September 2013 to January 2014. Building Peace Art Exhibition @ The National Diefenbunker Museum, Ottawa, Group Show.(evaluated by committee).
 * December, 2012. Unframed, Gallery 101, Ottawa, Group Show. (evaluated by committee)
 * November, 2012. Sketch. Saw Gallery, Ottawa, Group Show. (evaluated by committee)
 * December, 2011. “Gluttony.” Gallery 101, Ottawa, Group Show. (evaluated by committee)
 * July-August, 2011. “Heat of the Moment.” Tay Gallery, Kanata, Group Show. (Curated.)
 * February, 2011. “Call Me Romantic.” Tay Gallery, Kanata, Group Show. (Curated.)
 * November, 2010. “Carleton University Biennale.” Carleton University Art Gallery, Ottawa, Group Show. (Curated.)
 * April-June, 2011. “Canadian Abstract Art.” Snapdragon Gallery, Ottawa, Group Show. (Curated.)

Book Publications:

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 * Bellemare, Michel-Luc. (2009). Color-Realism: (The Essence of Color and Reality). Blacksatin Publications. National Gallery of Canada.
 * Bellemare, Michel-Luc. (2005). [=], (The Machine). Blacksatin Publications. National Library of Canada.
 * Bellemare, Michel-Luc. (2003). Nomologism: (Post-Post-Modernism) Blacksatin Publications. National Library of Canada.

Public Museums With Artwork (Note: These Artifacts are in various stages of Processing and Acceptance):

The Winnipeg Art Gallery, 2011. Artwork: “Cupcake”.

The National Gallery of Canada, 2009. Artwork: Color-Realism: (The Essence of Color and Reality).

Trent University Library, 2007. Artwork: Nomologism: (The advent of post-post-modernism), (2003).

Trent University Library, 2007. Artwork [=], The Machine (2005).

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