Marc Séguin: Icons

Lowell Ryan Projects is pleased to present Icons, an exhibition featuring the latest works of French-Canadian artist Marc Séguin. Exploring the uncertainty of our time through a grouping of symbolic archetypes; paintings of vultures, angels, wolves, and humans are executed in Séguin’s signature style of poignant colorful gestures and symbols juxtaposed against meticulously rendered charcoal drawings on raw canvas. The works on view meditate on the duality of human nature and our capacity to resist instinct. This is Marc Séguin’s first solo show in Los Angeles and with Lowell Ryan Projects.

Central to the exhibition is a large-scale painting titled Artist + Vulture. In the work a vulture is rendered in black charcoal, wings fully spread as if taking off in flight. The outline of a falling woman is painted on top of the vulture in thickly impastoed red oil paint as if she is dripping from the sky. The painting is ambiguous in its intent. Is the bird rescuing the woman or is the bird flying past her? How is the bird understood in the context of our times or culture? Accompanying Artist + Vulture are a series of smaller iconic paintings, classical depictions of angels, and renderings of vultures in various states of flight and stillness. Gestural markings in solid hues of oil paint conceal the faces of the angels or form symbolic depictions of shapes, stick figures, or abstract marks applied on top of the winged figures. Two howling wolves provide further symbolism in the exhibition. 

Reflecting on contemporary concerns—with wars, ecological disasters, and loss of faith understood through the distortion of our digital age—iconic representations take on new meaning and purpose. The vultures, angels, wolves, and people that inhabit these recent works represent the roles of guardians, whistle-blowers, victims, and executioners for the artist, although it is left for the viewer to determine which icon fills what archetype. “I believe it’s my role, as an artist, to stand as a witness and testify to certain social disturbances.” Although, for Séguin those social disturbances are not singular events but tropes that are repeated through time, referenced in mythology, and reflected in nature. Marc Séguin’s practice reinforces his sentiments that “art should not only serve the purpose of blindfolded decorative objects, but also as awareness of who and what we are; beings of beliefs and fury, capable of grace and cruelty.”