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**Q: We sometimes hear about art consultants or advisors. How does their role fit in with, or compare to, that of galleries?**

**Anie Deslauriers**: Art consultants or advisors play a role that complements that of galleries within the contemporary art ecosystem. Their work primarily involves supporting collectors, whether emerging or experienced, in defining and developing their collections. They can help collectors better understand the artistic context, identify artists or works that align with their interests, and navigate the art market.

Galleries, for their part, occupy a central position in supporting and promoting artists’ work. They often represent artists over the long term: organizing exhibitions, producing works, supporting career development, and building critical and institutional visibility around their practice.


**Q: How would you describe your role as an art consultant or advisor to someone who is just beginning to take an interest in collecting?**

**Danna Heitner**: The role of an art advisor is to provide guidance in the collection, acquisition, display and maintenance of art.

This relationship always begins with *education*. Education is a two-way street. Obtaining an in-depth understanding of the client’s interests, goals, and budget is pivotal. From there, introducing artwork that is tailored to the client. Ideally, for the client to see as much art in person as possible is the best means to cultivate one’s taste.

It is an advisor’s role to help the client *navigate* the complex art market by providing access to artists, galleries, dealers, art fairs and auction houses. A good art advisor has built important relationships with key players that will facilitate art acquisition.

**Q: In practical terms, who retains the services of an art consultant, the gallery or the client?**


**Anie Deslauriers**: In my experience, in general, the collectors or clients retain the services of the art consultant and pay for this support. The consultant therefore primarily acts in the interest of their client, helping them identify works, better understand the market, and build a collection.
 
In some cases, agreements may exist between a gallery and a consultant regarding the structure of a commission on sales facilitated by the consultant.

This aspect of the collaboration should be clarified from the outset to ensure everything proceeds smoothly!


**Q: In your view, how can consultants help make collecting more accessible or easier for new collectors?**

**Anie Deslauriers**: Consultants can play a reassuring role for emerging collectors. By sharing their knowledge of the field, they help demystify the art market, deepen understanding of artistic practices, and support informed decision-making.

I believe that this guidance can make initial acquisitions more accessible and less intimidating, while also fostering a more sustained and confident relationship with galleries and artists, particularly in discovery-driven contexts like Plural.


**Q: Could you share an example of how you have supported a client in acquiring a work of art?**

**Mylène Lachance-Paquin:** In my approach, acquisition is not simply a purchase, it is a strategic and engaged act, driven by a vision and an intention, and guided by a sharp reading of the market.

I recently worked with a client who wanted to build a collection from the very beginning, with the desire to engage with socially committed contemporary practices. My role was to translate that intuition into clear directions, then identify artists whose work offered both conceptual relevance and alignment with her values.

I acted as an active intermediary – facilitating access to works, fostering dialogue with galleries, and coordinating the sale, invoicing, framing, delivery and installation at the client's home.

In a market that remains largely opaque and marked by systemic biases, this kind of mediation is essential. What matters to me is contributing to collections that stand the test of time, both critically and in alignment with the collector's values.


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## In conclusion

To start collecting, the first step is to take the time to look and explore: visit exhibitions, meet gallerists and get acquainted with different artistic practices. It is also helpful to ask questions and learn – about the artist's approach, the context of the work, or how the market operates. Galleries and consultants play a key role in this process and can guide new collectors through their first acquisitions. Finally, events such as **Plural** offer a valuable opportunity to discover multiple galleries and artists in one place, making them an excellent entry point into collecting.

Whether you are a newcomer or a seasoned collector, the art ecosystem is full of resources and people ready to support you!

**If you want to work with a consultant, reach out to [info@agac.ca](mailto:info@agac.ca) to find trusted professionals across Canada.**

**Anie Deslauriers** *is the General Director of the Contemporary Art Galleries Association (AGAC), a non-profit organization that represents commercial contemporary art galleries across Canada. Having worked in both institutional and gallery settings, such as the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts and Blouin Division gallery, she has an in-depth knowledge of the gallery network and the contemporary art market.*

**Danna Heitner** *is a contemporary art advisor and founder of **[Danna Heitner Advisory](https://www.dannaheitneradvisory.com/)**, based in Toronto. She works with both private individuals and corporate clients as well as architects and interior designers to deliver inspired spaces to live and work. With 30 years of experience and continued active participation, [Danna Heitner Advisory](https://www.dannaheitneradvisory.com/) offers a discerning eye and access to a global network. With her guidance, the client’s art purchases have proven to be personally meaningful and financially sound.*

**Mylène Lachance-Paquin**, *based in Montreal, is an independent curator, writer, consultant and founder of [Ogive](https://ogive.ca/). Through [Ogive](https://ogive.ca/), she integrates contemporary art into events, businesses, and spaces, working with designers and architects to offer a tailored art advisory service. [Ogive](https://ogive.ca/) aims to create experiences that elevate corporate environments and bring art closer to the general public, while remaining true to each client's values.*

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Galleries, artists, dealers, artist-run centres, advisors, consultants – the contemporary art ecosystem brings together a diverse range of actors whose roles, though interconnected, are not always clearly understood.

This article aims to demystify these dynamics, in particular the role of art consultants and advisors, to better understand how they help make art more accessible and where they fit within the market.

To do so, industry professionals – Anie Deslauriers, AGAC’s General Director with years of experience in the gallery world, alongside Montreal and Toronto-based art advisors Mylène Lachance-Paquin and Danna Heitner – break down the role of art consultants in this Q&A.


Collecting: Demystifying the Role of Art Consultants

## For the fourth edition of the Plural Fair, Loto-Québec is once again partnering with artch to provide a platform for emerging artists.

Saturation—or excess—is unique to each of us. Our limits are not universal, and we do not reach saturation in the same way. The emotional impact of an event does not carry the same weight for everyone and perhaps that is where the complexity of the phenomenon lies: what pushes one person over the edge may leave another still within a tolerable zone. This tipping point is inherent to each individual.

To each their own affects, to each their own threshold.

Overload feels like a call for help: the moment when the body, the heart, the senses reach their limit. A signal. An internal alarm. The body speaking when reason still refuses to listen.

That tiny moment when everything shifts, when “more” is no longer synonymous with “better”—this is where the exhibition takes root. That intrusive thought, that micro-state that tells us it’s too much, that everything is about to spill over. What was once acceptable no longer is. An imperceptible shift that changes everything. The moment when the bearable becomes unbearable, when fullness becomes overflow.

This point of no return is rich: it contains within it a whole history of accumulation, of exhausted patience, of thresholds crossed. A volcano before eruption or a Big Bang—an infinite concentration of matter and energy that can no longer contain itself and must explode in order to exist otherwise.

This exhibition considers saturation as a condition for creation, for radical transformation.

Because saturation is also ecstasy, exhilaration, pleasure, release. A loss of control that can be both gentle and fatal. The mechanism is the same, regardless of how we frame it: it builds, it builds, and then suddenly, it bursts. Whether in pleasure or collapse, it is the same upward movement seeking release.

Saturation carries within it this dual promise: that of exhaustion or revelation. The moment when something gives way, when something can finally emerge.

The breaking point as possibility.

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Featuring the artists:

Montreal-based visual artist **Janna Yotte** develops a sculptural practice that explores the body, vulnerability, and transformation. Trained in photography and graphic design, she began her career with collage before shifting toward striking three-dimensional works.

Interdisciplinary artist based in Tiohtià:ke/Montreal, **Gabrielle Turbide** works at the intersection of art, biology, and technology. Her practice examines imposed forms of erasure—of bodies, voices, and ecosystems—and the dynamics of resistance that inhabit them.

Originally from Gatineau, **Zacharie Gauvreau** is a Montreal-based interdisciplinary artist and a graduate in visual and media arts from UQAM. Recipient of the McAbbie Foundation Excellence Scholarship (2023), his work has been exhibited in galleries, artist-run centres, and festivals across Quebec, including Blouin Division (2026), Atelier Silex (2025), artch (2023), Art Souterrain (2021), and AXENÉO7 (2019).

Renowned Québécois printmaker, **Guy Langevin (Loto-Québec Collection)** practices intaglio with a mastery that makes each print a visual event. His work explores zones of shadow and light—both literally and metaphorically—through subjects where softness and darkness coexist without resolution.

Visual artist **Florence Viau** examines the memory of the image and the limits of its mediums. Her practice navigates the tension between the permanence of stone and the transience of the screen, exploring what it means to fix an image—and what is lost in the attempt.

Born in Port-au-Prince, **Vladim Vilain** is a visual artist whose practice unfolds between Haiti and Canada, where he settled in 2012. Working primarily with photography, he approaches the image as a space of transformation where memory, spirituality, and identity converge. Rooted in Afro-surrealism, his work draws on ancestral traditions and folklore to construct worlds that exist between the visible and the invisible.

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*By Manon Pouliot, Head of the Loto-Québec Collection, and Sarah Kitzy Gineau Delyon, Director of artch*




Loto-Québec presents artch: Vertige de l'excès

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###### 1. Nicholas Crombach - Art Mûr
## *Cross Section III*, 2024

*Cross Section III* explores the intertwining of natural and artificial materials through the languages of geology, museology, and exhibitions. The work reflects on the blurred boundaries between nature and culture that define our current geological era. The colour palette and the carefully composed arrangement of materials highlight how materials accumulate, persist, and transform over time. The assemblage of these objects thus suggests the emergence of a world in which natural and human histories are inseparable. *Cross Section III* invites reflection on the hybridity of materials, exhibition systems, and the way objects carry multiple histories within them, existing both as vestiges of the past and active participants in the present.

*Cross Section III will be located on the 2nd floor, across from the staircase and the Loto-Québec booth, P06.*


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###### 2. Christos Pantieras - de Montigny Contemporary
## *In Bits and Pieces*, 2018
   

*In Bits and Pieces* examines the narratives and circumstances of men who discreetly seek intimacy with other men. Phrases such as “My wife doesn’t know I’m doing this,” “I’m told I’m really good,” and “I’m new to this” reveal secrecy, overconfidence, and initiation. Drawn from the profile descriptions of online dating and hookup platforms, these statements function as condensed confessions, distilling complex personal situations into brief declarations.

The work takes the form of letter boards and pedestal board signs, objects typically used to communicate, inform, or provide direction. Repurposed here, they reference human experience, presenting emotionally charged statements lifted directly from anonymous profiles. These anthropomorphic sculptures operate both as witnesses to and participants in an online world shaped by desire, vulnerability, and concealment. As viewers, we encounter moments of anticipation, loss, and uncertainty, and are left to consider whether these stories are slowly unravelling, or being rebuilt, piece by piece.

*In Bits and Pieces will be on display on the first floor, facing *Esse arts+opinions*, booth R01.*

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###### 3. Douglas Scholes - Galerie Robertson Arès
## *(This is) What happens when a thing is maintained (?)*, 2026


Douglas Scholes explores temporality and vulnerability in this sculptural installation of roughly 1,500 beeswax bricks. Warm, organic aromas introduce an olfactory dimension, while the material’s fragility contrasts with traditional brick, underscoring the towers’ precarity. 

**Performances by artist Douglas Scholes**  
**Friday April 10, 5 p.m. / Saturday April 11, 1 p.m. / Sunday April 12, 3 p.m.**

The artist engages with the structures through gestures of maintenance, reconfiguration, and repair, revealing the subtle tension between the transient and the enduring, and inviting reflection on ephemerality, care, performativity, and the sensorial experience of sculpture and public art.

*(This is) What happens when a thing is maintained (?) will be located on the first floor across from Galerie Robertson Arès, booth 118, and next to Wishbone Galerie, booth 138.*

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###### 4. Stanley Wany - ELLEPHANT
## *Pè Béto*, 2025 & *Sur le chemin de Port-au-Prince*, 2024-2025

Inspired by the Zangbeto, the traditional night guardians of Vodún among the Ogu peoples of Benin and Togo, Pè Béto reimagines their powerful masquerade form. Hidden within the sculpture, a speaker plays music recorded by Wany’s grandfather, Albert Gibbs. In the recording, he performs mandolin songs dedicated to each of his children who left Haiti in the early 1970s. The sculpture becomes a vessel of diasporic memory, carrying stories of departure, longing, and continuity across generations.

*Sur le chemin de Port-au-Prince* draws on the history of Wany’s family in Haiti, who built and operated a coffee processing factory in the 
mid-twentieth century. From cultivation to roasting, coffee production depended on the skill and labour of those who prepared it. Drawing and ink washes combine to evoke this family history. A dominant wash leads toward the export warehouse, where farmers’ and family names were replaced by the generic label “Café d’Haïti.”

**Artist Talk with Stanley Wany**  
**Sunday April 12, 1 p.m. - In French** 

Meet artist Stanley Wany for an artist talk about the installation on view at the fair, where he will explore the concepts of heritage and tradition that lie at the heart of his practice.

*Look for Pè Béto on the first floor across from the ELLEPHANT, booth 115.*


To learn more about the Plural installations, join Léa Lanthier-Lapierre for [a guided tour](https://www.plural.art/en/programmation) in French, *Tendre le fil : un parcours des installations*, on Saturday, April 11 at 12 p.m., or in English, *Weaving the Thread: A Walk Through the Installations*, on Sunday, April 12 at 3 p.m.!



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## During your visit to Plural, let yourself be drawn to the installations of the fair. These large-scale installations are works that do not fit into the booths, due to their hybrid nature or unusual size, punctuating the space, extending freely beyond the walls. These special projects explore and redefine the interplay between art and space, offering the public an immersive experience that goes beyond conventional formats.

Step outside the booth walls and discover these installations, which are spread across the two floors of the Grand Quay:



Beyond the Booths: Discover the Installations of Plural 2026

Plural is happy to present *ANTICIPATION*, a special exhibition curated by Sophie Latouche. Come by to see it in person at the Pavilion, on the second floor of the Grand Quay in Montreal's Old Port, from April 10-12, 2026.

Inspired by science fiction, especially the writings of Octavia E. Butler, *ANTICIPATION* explores the prophetic power of artworks that, through their materialities and gestures, inhabit the present while reaching toward what is to come.

The works presented envision the future as a practice of adaptation. They mobilize the reuse of metals, wood, textiles, plastics, found objects, and images to rebuild better. Faced with economic and ecological pressures, some transform used or discarded materials into resources; a natural logic emerging from subsistence needs, availability, and ideology. Other works focus on intimate acts of reactivation, where time is understood as cyclical and event-based. By delving into archives and recomposing fragments of the past to imagine plausible worlds at the threshold of utopia, bringing together their community within a shared time and space.


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This attention to temporality also takes form in works where the process itself becomes an act of projection: choreographed movements shape matter as a way of apprehending what lies ahead. Recurring motifs run throughout the exhibition, such as the machine, both functional and allegorical. Some works establish relationships between the mechanical and the corporeal, offering a reconsideration of what autonomy means: smiles appear on inanimate objects, battery-powered flowers light up, and the breathless song of pipes echoes our own forms of expression. Textiles, ubiquitous, become a harbinger vessel: will vulnerable bodies require protection and functionality to prepare for what is to come?

In this vein, *ANTICIPATION* brings into dialogue works whose materiality and symbolism approach the future as a porous and evolving field, fragile, precious, and threatened. Visitors are invited to reflect on their own anticipations, shaped as much by loss as by the possibilities of reinvention, asserting the importance of our current actions and our collective imaginaries.


The exhibition features works by the following artists:

- David Armstrong Six (Bradley Ertaskiran)
- Michelle Bui (McBride Contemporain)
- June Clark (Daniel Faria Gallery) 
- Betty Goodwin (Galerie Simon Blais) 
- Maggy Hamel-Metsos (Galerie Eli Kerr) 
- Anique Jordan (Patel Brown)
- Kelly Jazvac (Galerie Nicolas Robert) 
- Anne Low (Franz Kaka) 
- Jenine Marsh (COOPER COLE) 
- Caroline Monnet (Blouin Division)
- Bronson Smillie (Pangée)

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By Sophie Latouche

*Sophie Latouche is an independent curator and artist based in Tiohtià:ke/Mooniyang/ Montreal. Her curatorial practice draws from a fascination with images and their entanglement between representation and reality. Prompted by the idea of staging or fixing the “present moment,” she attends to the mutations produced by economic, media, and technological conditions, and how they shape artistic practices and their materials.*

*Formerly associate director at Galerie Pangée, she co-founded and co-directs the net.art platform Galerie Galerie Web. She also organized various exhibitions under the alias Sophie présente, notably at Galerie Nicolas Robert, Vidéographe, Family, and Produit Rien.*


Speculate on possible futures in the group exhibition "ANTICIPATION"

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Subsequently, in the second half of its existence, other AGAC projects continued in the same vein. Starting from 2007, under the management of Matthieu Gauvin, who was then AGAC's general director, the Papier fair became a major event over the course of its 15 editions (now taking on the name Plural). Indeed, AGAC has continued to evolve and develop through numerous other initiatives such as the Gala des arts Visuels (2011-2014), the standard contract between artist and gallery with the Regroupement des artistes en arts visuels (2012-present), Feature: Contemporary Art Fair in Toronto (2014-2015), *Collectionner - le guide* (2016-2017), the Art Market Forum (2019), the *Retrouvez l'art d'ici* campaign (2021), and more recently, Gallery Weekend (2021-present) and the Plural Contemporary Art Fair (2023-present). 

Rhéal Lanthier, owner of Montreal gallery Art Mûr, a long-standing member, and AGAC Board President between 2007 and 2013, believes that it is by building a public for these projects that the Association has been able to ensure the success and notoriety it enjoys today: “The dynamism that the Association has been able to inject into the market, by creating new collectors and an interest in collecting with several educational projects, is what makes Plural do so well today. [...] Because an audience has been developed over the years.” He points out that there is strength in numbers in this context too: “The art market is generally made up of small businesses, [...] so their weight, their promotional capacity is limited. [...] It is only by federating or working in collaboration that we can create projects that manage to get media coverage, a presence on the local scene.”


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On the other hand, over the years, AGAC has worked hard behind the scenes, federating its members according to a rigorous code of ethics designed to ensure the integrity and quality of each gallery. In addition, the Association fulfills its mandate by lobbying to represent its members before government authorities and other related institutions, in order to defend their interests, obtain funding, advocate for better support for the professions of gallerist and artist, as well as promote the recognition and vitality of the contemporary art market. Julie Lacroix emphasizes that “it's important to have a spokesperson, an advocate for all sectors, because we need one to make our mission and our vision known.”



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Today, with 34 galleries across Canada, including Montreal, Quebec City, Ottawa, Toronto, Halifax and Vancouver, AGAC remains a non-profit organization dedicated to defending the moral and economic interests of its members, ensuring the recognition and prosperity of the contemporary art market in Canada, as well as fostering public awareness of contemporary art. Looking back, Lorraine Palardy notes that “AGAC's vision seems to be bearing fruit, and [that] it is not too far removed from its original mandate: to reach out to people, to the widest possible audience, to support galleries, to support artists”. 



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## To find out more about its history, watch the round table *40 ans de l’AGAC: réflexions et perspectives* on our Youtube channel, or subscribe to AGAC’s social media and newsletter for more glimpses into the past! 

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## In 2025, the Contemporary Art Gallery Association (AGAC) celebrates its 40th anniversary, marking four decades of commitment to the defense and promotion of contemporary art. 

At the core of AGAC's mission is the representation of its members - all Canadian commercial contemporary art galleries - which goes hand in hand with its mandates to advocate for the prosperity of the contemporary art market, educate the public about the current art scene, and contribute to the promotion of contemporary art both in Canada and internationally. 

Originally the Association des galeries d'art contemporain de Montréal (AGACM), it was founded in 1985 by around twenty directors of Montreal galleries with the aim of seeking solutions to their common difficulties, as well as constituting a force that could express its needs and act in cohesion. Lorraine Palardy, founder of Les Impatients, gallerist, Chevalière de l'Ordre national du Québec, and former president of the AGAC Board of Directors, emphasizes the importance of solidarity in the milieu: “We tried to open up this association along other avenues, by solidifying ourselves with other partners. There were a lot of people around us who wanted AGAC to succeed. We could feel the support of artists and galleries alike.”

AGAC quickly established itself as a major player in the visual arts milieu, as well as in the Canadian art market, with major initiatives such as the first expo-fair dedicated to contemporary art in Canada, L'Entrée libre à l'art contemporain (1987-1993), the *Magazine ETC* (1987-1992), the Foire d'art contemporain (1994), the Prix Louis-Comtois (1991-present), the Prix Pierre-Ayot (1996-present), *Peinture Peinture* (1998), *Intersections Montréal-Toronto* (2000), Le Salon du Printemps (2002-2004) and many more. Isabelle Lelarge, who led the Association between 1988 and 1990, maintains that it is through these projects that AGAC has been able to spread its wings: “The quality of these events has enabled, each time, the emergence of a very lively, rich and creative art scene.” Indeed, Julie Lacroix, who headed the organization for over a decade, notes that this is how AGAC's mission unfolds: “We chose to extend the role of the sector's spokesperson, to not only cover its commercial interests, but also to broaden audiences in relation to what it offers, which is art, so to educate, democratize and promote.”

AGAC's 40th Anniversary: A Retrospective

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Here are a few reasons why companies might be motivated to collect art: 

## Support for artists 
The purchase of works of art by Quebec companies represents a significant percentage of annual acquisition transactions in the province, in some years almost equalling that of museum institutions. In this way, companies help to diversify funding for the arts by multiplying sources, thereby providing artists with greater independence. 

Indeed, by creating an acquisition policy and drawing up broad guidelines, corporate collectors affirm their support for the art market and equip themselves with tools to foster their relationship with artists. By setting an average number of acquisitions per year or an amount allocated to art purchases each year, they help ensure the vitality of the artistic field and demonstrate their support for local creators.


## Preservation of cultural heritage 
Corporate collections also enrich our cultural heritage, through their support of local artists and the preservation of contemporary art. They contribute to the longevity of works by ensuring that they are exhibited and disseminated in private and sometimes public settings. By collecting contemporary works, companies help to ensure that our artistic heritage is preserved and brought to light over time. 

Moreover, while many companies keep their works for posterity, others - due to a large quantity and lack of space - will sometimes have to dispose of works to prevent them from piling up in storage. Many then decide to make donations to museums and benefit auctions, thus contributing to the preservation and prosperity of Canadian art history.


## Representation of identity and values
A collection represents the ensemble of works of art purchased by a company, and is distinguished by its originality from one business to the next. It grows, consolidates and expands with each new acquisition. The works that make up a collection reflect passionate and committed purchases. Far from being tied to a single, distinct function, art collections in organizations play several roles: they can serve both as decorative objects and as vehicles for corporate identity and values. 

There are as many types of collections as there are business models. Some companies buy works of art out of passion and keep them preciously in their offices. Others will proudly show them off to visitors and display them in common areas. Some companies use artworks as a promotional tool to enhance their brand image. Others will take it upon themselves to support local artists and build up a visual archive representative of our times.

Many companies have acquisition committees and specific collecting mandates to guide their purchases. Certain organizations also develop a detailed policy regarding the medium, technique, subject, or artistic period to ensure that the works reflect the business’s intrinsic values.


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## Benefits for employees

- Facilitates social interaction; 
- Elicits emotional responses; 
- Enhances relationships between employees; 
- Improves the work environment;
- Encourages learning about artwork.

Indeed, artworks newly installed in the workplace are likely to encourage social interaction between employees. Regardless of the nature of these discussions, they create a climate conducive to exchanges relating to the works of art. The presence of art in a professional environment can also increase employees' interest in them in a broader context. If an employee enjoys being near a work of art, they may seek out more information about the artist and their approach, or even visit a gallery or museum to admire other pieces.

These benefits can be increased through mediation and promotion to employees and the general public, such as lending works to museum exhibitions, publishing a catalog of works from the collection, offering guided tours open to all, and more. 


## Tax benefits 
Companies who collect benefit from considerable tax advantages through the Quebec government in terms of amortizing the purchase of works of art. 

For all artworks purchased and destined to be displayed in the workplace, and whose author is a Canadian resident or citizen at the time of creation, businesses can amortize 33.3% of the acquisition cost on a declining balance. The following media are eligible: prints, etchings,
drawings, paintings, or any similar artwork whose cost exceeds $200.

Companies can also benefit from significant tax breaks when making a donation to a museum. To understand all the financial advantages available to companies, and those that apply to each particular situation, please consult an accountant.


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To learn more, do not hesitate to ask questions to experts in the field, such as gallerists, who will be able to guide you towards more specific answers.


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## While strolling through the fair, you may notice acquisition indications next to certain artworks, mentioning that they have been purchased by a museum or a company, and are now part of their respective collections. 

## But have you ever wondered: *why do companies decide to buy works of art?* Though art is not necessarily part of their main mission, a collection can directly benefit a company as a whole. 



Why do businesses collect art?

### A Journal of Reflections on the Endless Imaginary

### The mill turns. It bears witness to the perpetual motion of thought and the transformation of matter. With its repetitive cycle, it generates a whirlwind of air and dust, a spiral of flour, an infinite flow of possibilities.

*Sarah, December 15, 2024*

Let’s assume that the human imagination has no known end, that it can never be exhausted, but rather multiplies infinitely, creating unique imaginary worlds. Each creator can, in this sense, establish their own rules and construct their own laws within a conceived space. Since the limits of time and space do not exist in the vortex imaginarium, artists can embrace the irrational and the impossible without physical or logical constraints.

Let us define imagination as a pure space of freedom, where the inconceivable and the fantastic coexist without barriers, beyond the laws of what has already been seen. This free space does not have to represent the world as it is perceived. Each individual is free to push the impulse of creation to infinity, just as our surrealist artist friends have done, blurring the boundaries between reality and myth.

One may then wonder if the artist creates an imaginary world structured by laws, cycles, series, and patterns, or if this world surpasses human thought itself. How can this imaginary realm exist beyond the mind that conceived it? Could it stretch infinitely, especially through an artwork destined to be viewed by different individuals, each capable of shaping their own imaginary interpretations? The resonance of artworks extends this initial imaginary world into a shared one, reinterpreted and absorbed by those who experience it.


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*Manon, December 20, 2024*

We understand that artists draw inspiration from their environment: they are moved by their concerns about the current state of the world, by suffering, by beauty, by their origins. They borrow symbols, codes, and iconographies from various eras and from their daily experiences. Combined with their imagination, their creations become part of an endless, metaphorical universe, a refuge uniquely their own, where they feel free from all constraints.

This universe is composed of contrasts that both oppose and attract one another, forming an immense array of tangible and intangible possibilities, blending materiality and immateriality, which underpin the very foundation of their artistic approach:


### The seen and the unseen
### The full and the empty
### Attraction and repulsion
### Fragility and roughness
### Dream and reality
### Balance and imbalance

The artist creates based on what they wish to convey to the spectator and/or viewing public. Their imaginary world is built from personal experiences (human evolution, history, science, motherhood, fear of the other, technological advancements, the construction of dreams, etc.), which they share with others. These experiences place both the artist and the audience at the heart of this imaginary world and the creative process itself. The entirety of these feelings, material and immaterial, visible and invisible, forms an unending succession of images, where time and space dissolve into infinity.

Discover *Et si les moulins tournaient sans jamais s’arrêter*, an emerging art exhibition collaboratively curated by Loto-Québec and Artch, at booth P05 on the 2nd floor of the fair's pavilion, from April 11 to 13.


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The artists:

**Kelly Davis** explores the mystical realm of the imaginable, where abundance and infinite expansion reign. Through her abstract paintings, she creates portals to an invisible yet deeply felt reality, offering a space for personal and collective resonance. Her work is part of an ongoing dialogue, activated by the viewer’s engagement and nourished by an intuitive exchange that transcends language.

**Gabor Bata** draws and paints characters from his imagination who constantly try, but inevitably fail, to communicate and connect. He creates vibrant, voluptuous scenes that captivate the eye, influenced by his love of cinema, animation, comics, and design.

**Alfred Muszynski** sees his work as research, “a network of ideas above all.” His pieces intertwine codes and iconographies from the past and present, playing with reality and myth like a puzzle. His work is a network of symbolic references, where each painting finds its place within the system he has constructed.

**Alex Pouliot** seeks to reclaim the magic of art by exploring the invisible forces that shape appearances and individual identity. Often in dialogue with specific locations, his work questions the influence of Western cultural supremacy in mass media and its role in constructing and colonizing collective imaginaries.

**Judith Berry (Loto-Québec Collection)**: “This small painting is one of my many attempts to condense the landscape into a surface that feels manipulable. The winding spiral paths evoke an imposing form, similar to a hill. Yet, the painted surface remains opaque, with each gesture inscribed directly onto it. The image suggests vast expanses while taking on the appearance of a tangible object or a body fragment. This piece is part of a decades-long exploration aimed at blending the genres of landscape, still life, and portraiture. I confront the notion of landscape, our relationship to the environment, and the ways in which its transformations affect us.”

**Mélanie Dumas** explores materiality by engaging with space, fullness, and emptiness to reveal new geometries. Her work examines the concept of landscape through forms inspired by the living and synthetic structures that compose it. Balancing fragility and robustness, stillness and movement, she selects raw materials to highlight their properties and temporality. By incorporating active systems, she creates sculptures that reproduce natural phenomena on a small scale, questioning our relationship with the Anthropocene.

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By Manon Pouliot, Head of the Loto-Québec Collection, and Sarah Kitzy Gineau Delyon, Director of artch

Loto-Québec x artch : Et si les moulins tournaient sans ne jamais s’arrêter

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It all started with an ink drawing of four chickens originally attributed to Emily Carr that Tam came across in 2017 during her research on Chinese Canadian artist Lee Chao Nam 李趙南 at the BC Archives. But Lee was a friend of Carr, and Tam says it is possible that Lee taught Carr traditional Chinese brushwork to achieve the style in this sketch. While chickens have long been considered popular subject matter in Chinese ink painting, roosters are also a ubiquitous motif in Chinese porcelain dishware designs from Southern China and Hong Kong to Southeast Asia and their diasporas. Multiplied in inky form, they instantly appeal to young and old, like festival banners celebrating the humble yet magnificent bird.


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Restaged in part for Plural 2025, Tam has made a smaller selection of bird drawings including those crowd-sourced from the Richmond Art Gallery (2017) iteration of her exhibition in which visitors produced hundreds of drawings in a community event. As in earlier installments, a flock of these drawings fly overhead like the feathered friends they depict, big swags of papers that swoop across the ceiling. Tam’s exhibition offers a different perspective on art of the Chinese diaspora—literally and figuratively—as their display method is more about how the drawings flutter collectively to comprise the installation rather than fixate on fine details of each bird. The poetry of this work is such that one drawing cannot hang without the other; each must be in company of and shown as a group.

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I have always considered Tam to be an artist who moonlighted as art historical detective, mining the annals of Canadian art history for who and what has not been seen, surfacing histories lost and forgotten. Each project feels like a deep-sea diving expedition into art historical, archival and community records which Tam then materializes into an exhibition within an exhibition. Through meticulously staged installations, she presents a speculative art history for the viewer, stepping into a time machine to imagine what life was like for Chinese newcomers, or in the case of Lee, what his life might have looked like. In all of this, embedded in Tam’s deeply rooted and intertwined research practice as art is the story of Chinese immigration in Canada and the continued struggle for visibility and belonging both inside and outside of the art world. These histories, while constantly unfurling over land and time, are only just beginning.


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by Charlene K. Lau 劉雪铃

*The National Bank is proud to present Like rain drops rolling down new paint, an installation by Karen Tam, in the Espace Banque Nationale in the Grand Quay's of Port of Montreal's Terminal.*

## On a sunny March Sunday morning, I chat with Karen Tam on Google Meet. Cracking open the exhibition catalogue *With wings like clouds hung from the sky 大鵬就振翼* (2017), it fans out across my lap, opening to a photo of a bird’s eye view of the exact installation we are about to discuss. For this, Tam hung hundreds of sketches of birds—300 of which were drawn by the artist, her mother Yin Law 譚阮嫣娜, and the elder Tam’s painting teacher, Lui Luk Chun 呂陸川—across the ceiling of Richmond Art Gallery.



Karen Tam: Birds of a Feather 

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The artworks will be visible to the public from April 10 to May 1, 2026.
For VIP ticket holders, access begins at noon on April 2.


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The artworks will be visible to the public from April 10 to May 1, 2026.
For VIP ticket holders, access begins at noon on April 2.

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