Shared Heritage

Gilles Carle

For the very first time, Gilles Carle’s pictorial work will be revealed to the public as part of the exhibition Shared Heritage, presented at Arsenal Contemporary Art Montreal from March 31 to April 13, 2018.

Chloé Sainte-Marie, muse and lover of the Quebec film director, wishes to offer the visitors a unique opportunity to dive into Carle’s creative universe. Through this genuine testimony, more than 400 drawings and acrylics will be gathered, creating a new tribute and ensuring the longevity of the artist’s heritage. Inspired by caricature, comics, erotic and satirical drawings as well as emblematic art movements, these artworks reflect Gilles Carle’s instinctive need to seize everything he encountered.

Following his cinematographic approach, Carle puts on canvas what he sees and what drives him. Using his markers, brushes, pencils or pastels, he illustrates, with humour and sensitivity, the society in which he evolves.

Filmmaker of total freedom, Carle has documented Quebec society for more than 40 years, offering the world a genuine portrait of Quebec's identity and culture. Known for his audacity, the graduate student from École des Beaux-Arts directed more than 35 short and feature films in which appeared the greatest actors of his time. Gilles Carle, a key figure in the NFB's effervescence of the 1960s and 1970s, infused new blood into Quebec’s cinema.

Shared Heritage highlights the artist’s compelling urge to create, a preoccupation he carried all his life. The body of works, available for sale, gives the visitors an understanding of how the eye and the sensual intelligence of the pictorial artist generated the filmmaker’s characters.

The exhibition will also present various screenings in honor of Gilles Carle’s multidisciplinarity and of the indelible trace he left behind him.