January 17 – April 25, 2025
Artist Talk and Dialogue – March 13
Curator: Myriam Yates
Galerie d’art Antoine-Sirois de l’Université de Sherbrooke Espace Group Mach
F2500, boul. de l’Université Sherbrooke, Québec J1K 2R1
Curator Statement:
Douglas Scholes brings to the world of visual art an approach that blends pragmatism with vernacular aesthetics. He creates his works through actions that highlight a poetry of maintenance within the life cycles of everyday objects. He embodies the Wanderer, a character who sets to work through various journeys that lead him to recycling centers or within communities where he will temporarily manage the surplus of discarded objects that accumulate in the landscape, in cities, or along roadsides.
The artist thus takes on a role that we perceive as uncomfortable, since he extracts what we do not want to see: the perpetual cycle of objects that we produce and that must disappear, ideally without a trace. He sometimes takes long walks to reach sorting or landfill sites, where he finds objects in their final stages.
The photographs in Terrible Beauties remind us of our relationship with these objects that we use and then forget about after use, yet which continue to exist for some time. Here, they are carefully photographed and magnified by the size of the prints and their framing, even though they are meant to be hidden, buried, or destroyed.
Perhaps in response to this, Douglas Scholes has chosen to display his photographs not only on the wall and picture rail designated for the exhibition, but also behind that wall—a space that mirrors the liminal state shared by the objects he reveals and the places where he works…
Les beautés terribles, Galerie d’art Antoine-Sirois de l’Université de Sherbrooke
Artist Talk and Dialogue Event – March 13:
A roundtable discussion explored works related to the ‘Wanderings of a Rubbish Picker’ and ‘Terrible Beauties’ in dialogue with the research of Professor Hélène Mayrand and visiting professor Olivier Barsalou on their critical approach to environmental law and the issue that concerns all three of them: the invisibility of waste.
Rencontre dans le cadre de l’exposition Terribles beautés de Douglas Scholes