Painter, photographer, and video artist Jean-Sébastien Denis was born in Sherbrooke in 1970. He has lived and worked in Montréal since 1993. Mr. Denis studied fine arts at UQAM, where he received the Jacques de Tonnancour graduate award in 1997. He has since taken part in several group and solo exhibitions in Montréal, Sherbrooke, Toronto, France and Germany. The artist’s pictorial approach stems from a reflection on movement and the instability of the things around us. It attempts to translate the complexity of the world by working from a broad spectrum of pictorial methods. His recent series draws on the intersection between the palpable and the virtual that typifies our current reality.
Artwork description
This intrinsically plural work manifests itself in some 70 variations installed on shelters of the Pie-IX Bus Rapid Transit (BRT). The colourful and minimalist aesthetic stelae recalls flags and other cultural emblems.
Did you know?
Kyrielle is the first artwork integrated into a bus service infrastructure in Montreal.
Presented by groups of two, the compositions are available as geometric variations, inspired by this effect of the emblematic diamond of the Pie-IX BRT. The forms evoke both the sinuosities of a road and the incessant movement that characterizes the back and forth of public transit. Among the challenges presented to the artist, the work was to be consistent for the 13 km of the BRT and be appreciated at a distance, day and night.
Symbolic reflection of the multiculturalism of its users, Kyrielle wishes to honor the hybrid identity of Montreal and Laval and revive a feeling of pride and citizen belonging. In addition to emphasizing the new face of Pie-IX Boulevard, this project is an opportunity to highlight the cultural diversity that animates the two cities and to offer a festive and gathering vision of the artery.