Passé composé/Present Perfect

An exhibition of exhibitions 

Curatorial team: Andy Eychenne, Simon Guibord and Marie-Hélène Leblanc 

In collaboration with: Maxime Boisvert-Huneault, Sabrina Bouchard, and Jessica Minier 

Bilingual audioguide available 

Galerie UQO’s 10th anniversary activities were conceived by the curatorial team composed of Andy Eychenne (gallery assistant and master’s student), Simon Guibord (graphic designer) and Marie-Hélène Leblanc (director-curator of Galerie UQO). Their proposal is grounded on four principles: the role of the gallery’s architecture in the layout of exhibitions; the didactic texts for artworks and displays presented over the past decade; text as an exhibition object; and the image book as a form of visual archive.  

An exhibition of exhibitions, titled Passé composé / Present Perfect, will descriptively reinterpret the documentation of 42 exhibitions, segmented across the 10 walls that constitute the gallery’s interior architecture. This text-based exhibition will consist of 294 ekphrasis, descriptions of artworks and exhibition-related elements, and will be accompanied by a book with 420 images (10 walls X 42 exhibitions).  

The curatorial team used the institution’s collection of words, images, and voices accumulated over the past ten years as their research material. By relying on the visual, textual, and audio archive as its operational method of collecting, the curators sought to ascribe value to the words of the artists, curators, researchers and cultural workers who have collaborated with the gallery. The title, Passé composé / Present Perfect, honours the work of the 595 people who have contributed to the gallery’s programming, a past composed of humans, artworks, experiences, and learning. Stemming from Galerie UQO’s focus on research and creation, this proposal will not only highlight the gallery’s architecture, but will also underline the contribution of those who have left their mark on it.