Graham Cantieni, an Australian painter, draughtsman, and sculptor, moved to Canada in 1968, with a degree in education completed in 1958. Starting in the 1970s, he participated in numerous exhibitions both in Canada and abroad. After earning a master’s degree in art history at Concordia University (1987), he taught at the Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières from 1989 to 2003. His paintings, drawings, and sculptures are in various collections, including those of the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, the Musée d’art de Joliette, and the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec.
Artwork description
Situated in Parc René-Lévesque in Lachine, along Chemin du Canal, the painted-steel artwork is presented as a human-scale cubic frame structure. Flat organic forms cut out of steel are affixed inside and outside the cube. The sculpture is painted white with black lines, and the organic forms are marked with black. At the centre of the cube are three square forms, attached to the frames. In this artwork, the artist transposes his pictorial research into volumes, pursuing his analysis of the relations between illusionist space and material space that gave rise, in the 1980s, to numerous charcoal drawings. Through a play on perspective, the artwork invites viewers to travel into an ambiguous, complex space halfway between reality and imagination. It is also an homage to Hermes, the Greek god of solitary explorers, who find their way thanks to their skill.