Fluid State is an exhibition that exposes humanity’s relationship with water.

Our connection with water is essential to our lives. It composes 60% of our bodies. Without water, there is no ‘us’. Beyond this physical need for water lies a mystical, emotional and profoundly personal bond. If, like me, you spent your childhood in and around water, you are forever changed by the relationship you developed with this basic element. Often, we spend our adult life trying to renew this feeling of being one with nature.

As a child, I was intimately connected with a river, the Chenal Tardif, in Notre-Dame-de-Pierreville, Quebec. Our family cabin sat on stilts on its shores. Every spring, the water rose and flooded the land. In the summer, the shallow muddy waters warmed up and flowed gently towards Lac Saint-Pierre, an impressive widening of the St-Laurence seaway. In the winter, the river froze over and became a road for ice fishers who made the lake their second home for a few months.

That river filled my soul with a variety of experiences and emotions that became the mythology of my life. As an artist, my visual world is deeply rooted in what that river offered me, from floating down its warm currents to canoeing between the trees of a flooded forest to taking boat rides to the lake and seeing the world expand from the river’s narrow channel to the immensity of the open waters. All of those moments were filled with a sense of awe and profound connection to the world we are born into.

With this exhibition, I share the feeling of completeness, of being part of the elements, that I experienced as a child. Each of the works presented in Fluid State offers a moment of intimacy with water, where visitors can play with the sense of wonder brought on by the images and sounds surrounding them.

Fluid State invites the viewers to flow into a world where water offers a cradle to surrender to. It affirms the notion that we are made of this element. We are water, and water is us.

Fluid: Adjective: able to flow easily.

State: Noun: the particular condition that someone or something is in at a specific time.