Opening: THE NEW GODS: Alejandro Garcia Contreras and Jose Pedneault
Please join us for the opening of THE NEW GODS, a Featured Exhibition of the 2015 Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival.
THE NEW GODS is a cross-continental collaboration between Canadian artist Jose Pedneault Montreal and Mexican artist Alejandro Garcia Contreras Mexico City. Featuring an extraordinary series of large-scale photographs, this project examines fantastical rites of spring that have emerged spontaneously within Carrillo Puerto, an isolated village in the mountains of Chiapas in southern Mexico. The exhibition will also include a select grouping of smaller sculptures and paintings as an extension of the photographic subject matter into other media, an experimental approach which is integral to this multidisciplinary collaboration.
The artists will be in attendance and all are welcome.
Alejandro Garcia Contreras has exhibited in the United States, Europe, Japan, and Peru. Venues in Mexico include the Museum of Modern Art, Centro Nacional de las Artes, and Museo Experimental El Eco in Mexico City; Museo de los Pintores Oaxaqueos Oaxaca; and Centro Cultural Jaime Sabines in Tuxtla Gutierrez Chiapas. In 2008 Contreras co-founded the Laboratorio de Artes de Chiapas and in 2009 he joined Neter, an initiative promoting young Mexican artists locally and internationally. In 2013, he completed a residency/workshop program at Les Territoires in Montreal. Contreras has received awards from Artfest International 2006 and the FONCA Jovenes Creadores 2009, 2014.
Jose Pedneault's photographs and installations have been shown in exhibitions and festivals in Canada, France, Poland, China, Cambodia and Luxembourg. In 2007 Pedneault received the Peoples Choice Award at Le Mois de la photo in Montreal, and her work was included in a group exhibition in the Canadian Pavillion at the 2010 Worlds Fair, Shanghai. Pedneault is co-founder and board president of Les Territoires, a non-profit organization that provides opportunities to emerging artists and curators. She also teaches photography at Concordia University
This exhibition has been made possible by the Fondo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes FONCA of the National Council for Culture and the Arts, Mexico.
