Loto-Québec presents artch: Vertige de l'excès

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.

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.