This current exhibition at Projet Pangée is the perfect remedy for any end-of-winter blues, as its content is a romantic expression of the wonders and warmth of wild, blooming gardens and orchards, bright summer skies and special moments nature has to offer. The Flowering Songs is a collection of memories, imaginings, and glimpses into the spirit of a young womanâ€s youth: Darby Milbrath. Immediately recognizable is her expressionist style of painting. While not full realism, the viewer understands the manner in which the colours and forms are distorted to evoke the imageâ€s mood. In the first painting of the show, the two figures in the foreground are reminiscent of Henri Matisseâ€s dancers, and the rest of the image could practically be an homage to van Gogh. So, if you are interested in viewing or collecting a contemporary Canadian version of this style of painting, The Flowering Songs comes highly recommended.

Upon entering the gallery, consider Songs Of Experience a map and legend of the different settings of Milbrathâ€s featured work. The wild forest, cozy garden and distant interior introduced here could very well be the location from which the artist paints these glimpses of her past and imagination throughout the rest of the exhibit. In a few of the paintings, the figures are seen from a distance, like those mentioned above, and are gestural, interacting with the spaces and exploring the vast gardens. However, this mood is not reciprocated in the figures shown up-close in Love and the Blue Butterfly, Washing The Bedding, Wedding Moon, and Claire, Sick in Bed. Rather, their expressions are melancholic, disheartened, and even ill. These individuals are also not whole, unlike their smaller counterparts. Only faces and incomplete portions of bodies are shown, often blending in with their surroundings, they pale in comparison. With their colour being so washed-out and muted, perhaps they are to be understood as incomplete and fading memories. The contrast between these representations and the charming, romantic environments they occupy is intense and even unsettling at times.

Nevertheless, the overall effect of this juxtaposition in addition to Milbrathâ€s use of strong complementary colours is successful in forming a unified piece. The blues paired with oranges and the reds with greens result in a harmonious image. Vibrant red-oranges and deep blues and greens animate scenes of wild gardens, flowers, and fruit. Even the bright moon and sun are part of the nature upon which they shine with equal luminescence (see Red Moon in the Orchard).

More than anything, Milbrathâ€s current work is a celebration of natureâ€s beauty; a subject that clearly has had a great influence on her as an artist. The compositions, which are generally triangular, have flowing floral patterns and smoky, textured backgrounds that are married from top to bottom, un-phased by background, middle ground or foreground planes. Her rendition of hanging fruit and flowers, especially in Fruits Of Paradise, gives a sense of exuberant elegance like that of eighteenth-century Rococo and Chinoiserie interior décor. Their stems, leaves and flower petals evoke exquisite chandeliers and fine jewelry, demonstrating natureâ€s beauty reflected in art. In addition to the paintings hung on the walls, fresh apples overflow from a large planter in the center of the room and a vase of aromatic seasonal blooms rests on a stand, both providing a romantic perfume to the space and a physical presence of what the viewer sees in the images.

The Flowering Songs, open to the public until April 14, 2018, is a lovely escape into an artistâ€s secret garden and its design will surely transport the viewer into a realm of wonder and imagination.

What is it about painting that makes it such a phenomenon of human visual history? Is it the materiality of paints themselves—oils, acrylics, their composition of pigments and binders? Perhaps it is the process of applying the paint to a number of different surfaces and the unique effect that occurs. One could examine the many facets of painting in all of its forms and still, there may never be one single answer as to why painting prevails in the world. When describing painting as a visual form of art, there are many keywords commonly used such as colour, pattern, shape, contrast, light, and texture. This is the language used when speaking and writing about painting, however, artist Marie Bineauâ€s current work goes a step further so as to apply these terms literally, as she examines painting as subject matter.

While the majority of her paintings in her recent exhibition at Galerie Luz were non-representational and largely geometric, there is a sense that Bineauâ€s work points to the way nature is reflected in painting. Forms that appear in the natural world, like patterns, textures and volute spirals, are strewn about canvases, wood boards and prints alike, tying art and nature together. Overlapping shapes and gestural lines intersect each other energetically while patterns wrap around the edges of the canvases as though alive and wanting to spread onto the walls. These forms create an intertwining barrier, like the perimeter of a forest wall, unable to see beyond, disrupting any possibility for the illusion of depth.

The placement of canvases is sculptural in and of itself, moving beyond triptychs to combinations of four, six or seven. The canvases are staggered, leaving negative spaces in their arrangement, a design that leaves the viewer wondering about the voids and their function to the artwork before them. The piecing together of the multi-canvas paintings also allows the viewer to wonder whether the artwork functions only one way—the way it has been presented by the artist and curator—or if it could be shifted and if so, would it tell a different narrative? This manner of playing with numerous different sized canvases evokes dynamic movement unlike the traditional static salon style of exhibiting paintings. This, along with the gestural and lively configurations of shape, pattern, colour and texture that appear on the canvases are what aide in the visualization of how nature in its most abstract forms is reflected in Bineauâ€s art.

There are a few pieces that do feature representational content: one painting and two digital prints. The painting, named Paysage aux trois Vénus, features three Klimt-esque women or Venus figures. Each on its own individual long, narrow canvas, they are placed atop and alongside the geometric portions of this piece. They do not appear separate, but rather are molded to their surroundings and integrated with the earth tones, patterns and sweeping circles that make up the painted surface of the sculptural seven-canvas collection.

What is most interesting about Paysage aux trois Vénus is the way that Bineau depicted each Venus as peeking through shadow or blending into its landscape. The reason they are somewhat reminiscent of Austrian painter Gustav Klimt is due to their thin, extended bodies which are immersed in pattern and paint. The topmost figure is the most visible as she is placed horizontally despite her standing pose. Nearly three-quarters of her face is discernable while only parts of the rest of her body poke up from the dark paint, just as though the face, a hand and knees break the surface of the water while floating on oneâ€s back. She is either coming out from underneath or is being pushed down further by the opaque black paint that envelops her.

The second-most recognizable Venus appears on the right of the piece on her own vertical canvas. However, unlike her sister above, this figureâ€s portion is taken over even more so by the rest of the painting, with overlapping circles and many long strokes of colour pouring down like a waterfall acting as a veil covering her body. All that remains to be seen is a much darker face, almost a silhouette with only a few features highlighted roughly, and the hint of a neck and shoulders.

The third Venus takes a keen, searching eye to see. It is this figure who has become most immersed in her environment and one with her landscape. What could be described as an abstract valley-scape contains subtle indications of a Venus figure laid horizontally. Do we know for sure that she is there, or are we just assuming she is following the paintingâ€s title and the two other figures in similar compositions, letting our mind fill in the blanks that our eyes cannot see? Nevertheless, what is apparent is that all three together form an evolution, the order of which is ambiguous.

Evolution, or better, metamorphosis could very well be a theme of this exhibition. In a more literal sense the metamorphosis of painting, which Bineau analyzed in creating each piece. The metamorphosis can also be represented by a single motif that is ever-present in these works: the spiral. In some cases, Bineau emphasizes this motif even more so by incorporating the words “volute” “spire” and “spirale” written into her work. This is the case with Tondo 1, a painting of vibrant reds, yellows and oranges on a circular wooden surface. Here Bineau painted her own snail shell volute, spiraling around the circle in its own wild manner. Nautilus, a digital print on mylar features an image of a real mollusk shell, as its title suggests. All contained within a circle, the overlaying, transparent images on mylar give a similar effect of her larger paintings on canvas that are made up of overlapping forms. In Casa Playa, Bineau digitally manipulated an image of a palm leaf to form a volute of its own. The ripples of texture and alternating light and dark pattern found in spirals are mimicked here by each individual strand of the palm leaf that turns in towards its beginning.

The thing about metamorphosis in nature is that there is a clear beginning and end. Perhaps then, in the case of Marie Bineauâ€s undertaking of representing the nature of painting, it is less so about the conception of painting or the final product and more so about the process itself that is significant. One thing that is evident when looking at Bineauâ€s current work of large geometric formations, multiple Tondoâ€s and digital prints, is that while they are complete works, they still appear to be moving, changing and reshaping before our eyes.

Upon entering the Galerie Trois Points, the viewer is presented with an Inventaire of twelve works of art.  Whether you choose to explore each artwork in the order set out by this inventory, or you simply wander through the gallery space at your own pace, the result is a piecing together of the Buenos Aires Cimetière de la Récoleta as set out by Natascha Niederstrass†Le Point Aveugle. Her photographs and objects offer glimpses of their setting, and their subtle details give mention to the spaces that were eventually brought to life by the “click” of a shutter. Looking at this personal archive, Le Point Aveugle allows us to imagine the paths that meander through this cemetery and the past lives that touched its remains.

Despite the lack of any human figure in the photos of her Inventaire, Niederstrass†images contain a sense of life found within these seemingly long-abandoned places. Her attention to detail highlights the materiality of the space, the dust and grime nearly tangible, and the agelessness of some areas that appear to be untouched by time. Niederstrass†play with focus gives the viewer a dreamy sense of viewing, like the imperfect recall of a memory.

Le Point Aveugle triggers the imagination, the out-of-focus areas activate the brain to fill in the blanks. This “blind spot” could refer to the blurred line between the clearly visible and the barely there, which is ever present throughout this exhibition. Even the dark blue walls of the gallery seem to mimic the dark corners of the images, of areas unreachable by light. Perhaps the title of the exhibition refers to the boundary between light and shadow, which is pleasant and promising in some cases, and ominous in others. Figure 8: Allée no. 1 (Corridor) is an example of the former. The blur of the alleyway at the base of the image appears to be obscure and unstable, as though the ground could collapse at any moment. Yet, following the strong verticals of the composition, we are met with the brilliant luminescence of the street beyond and are comforted by the visible passage leading out. Contrasting to this image, figure 12: Allée no. 2 (Impasse) evokes the ominous dead-end, both figuratively and literally. The darkness at the heart of the composition draws us in, but are we willing to step into a place where the walls appear to be closing in, inch by inch?

Niederstrass†black and white photographs of the Buenos Aires cemetery provide a unique perspective of an augural space. However, despite the archival structure of her work, the exhibition is not a straightforward guided tour of the Buenos Aires Cimetière de la Récoleta. Rather, Le Point Aveugle functions as a scavenger hunt where the inventory and the image titles provide hints but leave it up to the viewer to discover how the pieces fit together.

I suggest that you pay attention to the differences between the inventory titles and the image titles. Niederstrass†elimination and inclusion of certain fragments (figures 7, 9 and 11) allow the artworks to exist and be viewed in multiple dimensions and contexts. Overall, Le Point Aveugle recounts a story: of the photographerâ€s visit, of the spaces that make up the Buenos Aires Cimetière de la Récoleta and of the creation of an artist’s archive.