I had just about touched down in Montreal after my two-week trip to Germany when preparations started for the Festival International Montréal en Arts (FIMA). My gallery is partnering with FIMA, helping the festival to attract a more international component. So, starting with the FIMA dates and continuing through the month of July, Visual Voice Art Gallery is presenting Mariana Escribano, a painter from Mexico, and Maria Idilia Martins, a sculptor from Venezuela. The exhibition is titled Kaléidoscope Latin – you can read more about this show in the Belgo Report here.
left: Mariana Escribano, right: Maria Idilia Martins
Besides providing a down-town location for the festival, I also contributed in another way: this year I awarded a Discovery Prize to one of the participating artists at the FIMA. I must say, it was a pretty easy choice. Partly because I thought that about 85% of the artists exhibiting at FIMA this year were very main-stream, some extremely kitschy (borderline tacky), with few fresh, new ideas. Which made the artists I ended up choosing stand out even more. I immediately fell in love with the works by Christophe Heldt and Florence Hupin.
This creative duo combines their talents to create stimulating, innovative prints which are part photography, part screen-print. The Discovery Prize is an exhibition of their work at the gallery, so look out for Heldt and Hupin’s work in the 2009 season at Visual Voice.
