PAIEMENT, Alain (1960)

Alain Paiement has a bachelor’s degree in visual arts and teaching (1983) and a master’s degree in visual arts (1987) from the Université du Québec à Montréal. During his studies, he also spent time studying at the École nationale supérieure des arts visuels of La Cambre (Brussels, 1983-84) and the Université de Paris I (courses in aesthetics, 1985-86). His multidisciplinary artistic production — painting, installation, photography and video — shows a continuous interest in geography and mapping processes and questions our way of learning and representing space. Two main groups of work define his practice: the photographic sculptures (1986-2000) and the photomappings (1996-2013). Work from the first group depicts architectural interiors using multiple shots to systematically cover a spherical panorama. Work from the latter group presents unusual aerial views that map domestic and public spaces two-dimensionally (1996-2004) or via three-dimensional projection (2005-2013). Alain Paiement has won several awards, including the Prix Graff (1997) and the Louis-Comtois Award (2002). His work has been shown in several individual and collaborative exhibitions, including at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York (1992) and at La Biennale de Montréal (2002). Several pieces belong to a diverse range of major collections, including the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec and the Canadian Photography Institute in Ottawa. He has also produced public art projects such as Bleu de bleu (2017) — an eight-kilometer installation extending along Autoroute 20 that transforms the car ride between Montréal — Trudeau airport and the city centre into an artistic journey, evocative of the Saint Lawrence River. Entirely financed by private funds, Bleu de bleu is a National Bank initiative to commemorate Montreal’s 375th anniversary. It will remain for at least five years. In addition to his artistic practice, Paie-ment has also been a professor at the École des arts visuels et médiatiques at the Université du Québec à Montréal since 2005.