Cruel to be Kind/Les plus beaux cauchemars

[En anglais]

Dancing among painting, sculpture, and installation, Cruel to be Kind/Les plus beaux cauchemars at Galerie d’Outremont brings together the work of Delphine Hennelly and Jeanie Riddle. The exhibition is the nucleus of the Pictura triennial founded by Trevor Kiernander in 2018. For Pictura’s second edition, galleries across Montréal were invited to program exhibitions of paintings between late October and December 2023—although some began in September and others continue into January. Cruel to be Kind/Les plus beaux cauchemars, curated by Anaïs Castro and Alice Ricciardi, is split into three sections presented at Le Livart, Galerie d’Outremont, and the Stewart Hall Art Gallery. Placing an emphasis on the contradictions that arise from living in the world today, the exhibition as a whole brings together works by emerging and established artists. Pointing toward a world that has essentially lost hope, Castro proposes that art, and especially painting, allows for reflection and can reignite the spark of faith in the future.

The Cruel to be Kind/Les plus beaux cauchemars exhibition at Galerie d’Outremont is an immersion in the act of painting: colour is blended out onto the walls in wide strokes of pastel blushes, and gathered once more on canvas. Castro describes the selection of acrylic, oil, linen, cotton, and found objects as “trojan-horsing feminine codes and iconography”¹ 1 - Anaïs Castro, Cruel to be Kind/Les plus beaux cauchemars (curatorial essay). into the gallery.