Regiment

By David Blatherwick
Edward Day Gallery, Toronto, October 2007

When we first see the installation of Sophie Jodoin’s recent series, Regiment, what we see are simply many truncated bodies lined up along a wall in an orderly grid work of framed paintings on mylar. This installation is accompanied by a video projection, done in collaboration with David Johnston, of the same characters, but here the bodies are blurred and faces clearly defined. Two ways of mentally arranging the accumulation of humanity found here. Two points of entry. A brigade indeed, our first impression is of the sheer numbers. Furthermore, like the military’s ideal, these figures are anonymous individuals put to the service of some larger project. In the video the focused faces peer from the hazy bodies as if they were two separate beings. In the paintings the composition cuts off our ability to identify the individuals being looked at here. Or should I say examined? The way these works have been painted is so consistent, so controlled, so unrelenting that the immediate impression is one of a clinic or an archive. Jodoin has apparently removed all the romance of painting that we so intuitively crave. All that coloured dirt that so seduces us is gone and we are left high and dry. The effect is disturbing. Yet we can’t help looking. Why is that? The paintings won’t give us what we expect; they seem to want something else. So we stay. We stay to find out both why we, as fellow humans and potential members of this regiment, get something out of looking at these things as well as to find out why the artist chooses to work like this. We end up stuck in the middle of a quandary, an unspoken question. And so we stay.

First of all, the members of Jodoin’s mock regiment are – for the most part – hardly fit for battle. Like the vast majority of us, the figures are in various stages of “unfitness” in both the sense of what we might expect in the military and certainly in the sense of the fabulous torsos we see presented by the media. They, like us viewers, are ordinary folks caught in the headlights of Jodoin’s artistic vehicle. Frontal, frank, not suggestive of any symbolic gesturing, these bodies are simply there to be looked at. Like the eternal fascination of looking at faces, we can look at a body forever and still find something in it that keeps us there. This is the crux of the matter. Our fascination is both erotic (we have to admit it) and scientific. We get the opportunity to look as long, and in whatever way we want at something that has so many complicated psychological and social barriers around it that we feel like privileged voyeurs. Lucky as we are, we get conflicted when given a chance like this.

The act of looking, when we really do it in a profound way, always gets complicated. I believe what Sophie Jodoin is doing here is asking us to really look. By taking away the romance of painting or the narrative out of the video she is doing the equivalent of taking away all the special effects of a Hollywood movie. We are left with pure content. And this content is so close to us that it shocks us, disrupts our easy flow and refuses to

give us an easy buzz and send us on our way. It is more like the stripped down, painfully detailed vision of a Stanley Kubrick film. His adage (and I paraphrase) “Style is a result of the way we think” fits here. She needs to paint a certain way and so she does. That, in the true sense, is a “style” unto itself. It is, in fact, more so a style because it is so unforgiving, so adhered to that we have to follow its own sensibility, its own logic.

Jodoin clearly has a gift for painting the figure, which she has done for close to twenty years now. An ability both admired and reviled in the art world, it is something that this artist, and many others like her, has to grapple with in order to make effective beyond the simple admiration of a talent. Once a medical illustration student, Jodoin has found, for this series, that the brush is her scalpel, her sonograph, her stethoscope. Painting the figure is a profound form of examination for this artist. Like any task repeated, infinitely detailed, and scrupulously labored, it is driven toward a form of perfection that becomes a manifestation of some obsession. Yet, like any repeated task, it bares fruit in the subtle differences of each individual recurring entity. The uniformity of format, materials, technique, subject slowly reveal the differences of the persons portrayed. Every time she paints a new torso it is the variations in that particular person that one notices. These are human bodies after all, and we are profoundly attached to them.

We “read” them not looking for an ideal so much as a form of consolation. It is a strange relief that the excess of possibilities is what actually makes us human. This then explains why this grouping of works on mylar must remain a unit; it is through collectivity that the differences have a force. Loose one member and the unit is no longer.

So the surgeon is a poet after all. For all the varied intentions of any given artist there is often an underlying level of rumination involved in this seemingly hermetic, contemplative, highly focused practice. The ritual of it all is sometimes unspoken, yet the most affectively communicated. Why is it that most painters (or artists in general I should perhaps say) lock onto a subject or form and thrash through its possibilities for years and sometimes a lifetime? Of course it is an intellectual pursuit of sorts, but this is oft a clever guise for intimacy with a subject and meditation as well.

So, in a strange twist of things we, the viewer, go from the clinic to the sanctuary while looking at this installation. The cold hand of analysis transforms into the poised gesture of calm contemplation. This is the pleasure of viewing anything long enough; our vision transforms, translates, evolves, mutates. The work of Sophie Jodoin demands that level of lingering ‘regard’. Allow yourself to hang about. Go from cold to warm. It is that last refuge of art and the reason it persists.

Copyright © 2012 David Blatherwick

SOPHIE JODOIN
Lives and works in Montreal, Quebec, Canada

www.sophiejodoin.com sophiejodoin@gmail.com

SOLO EXHIBITIONS (SELECTION)
2019 Toi que jamais je ne termine, Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, Québec
2018 Room(s) to move : je, tu, elle (third chapter), Musée d’art contemporain des Laurentides, Saint-Jérôme, Quebec. Curator:

Anne-Marie St-Jean Aubre

Room(s) to move : je, tu, elle (second chapter), MacLaren Art Centre, Barrie, Ontario. Curator: Anne-Marie St-Jean Aubre 2017 Room(s) to move : je, tu, elle (first chapter), Expression, Centre d’exposition de Saint-Hyacinthe, Quebec. Curator: Anne-

Marie St-Jean Aubre

il faut qu’elle sache, Arprim, Montreal, Quebec
2015 une certaine instabilité émotionnelle, Battat Contemporary, Montreal, Quebec
2014 how permanent is permanent, Acme Project Space, Londres, Royaume-Uni
2013 and so uncertain suddenly, Line Gallery, North Bay, Ontario
2012 Small Dramas & Little Nothings, Union Gallery, Queens University, Kingston, Ontario (booklet)

close your eyes, Richmond Public Art Gallery, Colombie-Britannique. Curator : Nan Capogna (booklet)
2011 I felt a cleaving in my mind, Battat Contemporary, Montreal, Quebec. Curator: Susannah Wesley (exhibition catalogue)

Petites chroniques des violences ordinaires, Musée d’art de Joliette, Quebec. Curator: Marie-Claude Landry (booklet)

Tant de morts pour si peu, Oboro, Montreal, Quebec
2010 Small Dramas & Little Nothings, Ottawa School of Art, Ontario

De peine et de misère, Centre Clark, Montreal, Quebec (publication)
2009 Nous sommes en manque, National Arts Center, Ottawa. Invited by Wajdi Mouawad.

Headgames: hoods, helmets & gasmasks, Battat Contemporary, Montreal, Quebec (Exhibition catalogue)

Menus drames et petits riens, Maison des Arts de Laval, Québec. Curator : Danielle Lord (booklet)
2008 Hoods, helmets & gasmasks, Connexion Gallery, organized by UNB Art Centre, Frédéricton, New-Brunswick 2007 Regiment, Nanaimo Art Gallery, Nanaimo, British Columbia; Edward Day Gallery, Toronto, Ontario
2006 Regiment, McClure Gallery, Visual Arts Centre, Montreal, Quebec (booklet)
2004 Drawing Shadows; portraits of my mother, Edward Day Gallery, Toronto, Ontario (exhibition catalogue) 2003 Figures Undressing, Edward Day Gallery, Toronto, Ontario

GROUP EXHIBITIONS (SELECTION)
2017 The State of Parenthesis, Galerie UQO, Gatineau, Quebec. Curator : Marie-Hélène Leblanc

Édition – Forme – Expérimentation, Arprim, Montreal, Quebec. Curators : Collectif Blanc
Des lignes du temps – Dessins de Concordia, Fondation Molinari, Montreal, Quebec. Curators : Eric Simon, François Morelli, Gilles Daigneault
Poésie singulière et autres histoires / Uncommon Poetry and Other Stories, Battat Contemporary, Montreal, Quebec

2016 Édition – Forme – Expérimentation, Galerie UQO, Gatineau, Quebec ; Toronto Book Art Fair, Toronto, Ontario. Curators : Collectif Blanc

Assemble : Five years of contemporary Canadian drawing, 2011-2016, Art Gallery of Sudbury, Ontario. Curator : Amanda

Burk
2015 Marie-Michelle Deschamps, Julie Favreau, Sophie Jodoin, Beth Stuart, Battat Contemporary, Montreal, Quebec

Tell Me Something and Take It Back: An Exhibition of Contemporary Drawing, Stanlee and Gerald Rubin Center for the Visual Arts, The University of Texas at El Paso, Texas
De la parole aux actes / Actions Must Match Words, Musée d’art contemporain des Laurentides, Saint-Jérôme, Quebec. Curator : Anne-Marie Saint-Jean Aubre (booklet)

2014 The Sensory War 1914-2014, Manchester Art Gallery, Manchester, Royaume-Uni. Curators : Ana Carden-Coyne, Tim Wilcox, David Morris (exhibition catalogue)

Sophie Jodoin / Jacinthe Lessard – L, Battat Contemporary, Montreal, Quebec

MONO/CHROME, Robert Kardosh Projects, Vancouver, British Columbia
2013 Une esthétique de l’imperfection (10 artistes-60 polaroids), Encadrex, Montreal, Quebec. Curator : Serge Allaire

Tom Fairs, Alex Frost, Sophie Jodoin and Thérèse Mastroiacovo, Battat Contemporary, Montreal, Quebec Mont et merveilles – 7 collections universitaires, Centre d’exposition de l’Université de Montreal, Quebec. Dans ces dessins mes mains rêvent…, Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Quebec. Curator : Stéphane Aquin

2012 Intimate Theatre, Agnes Etherington Art Centre, Kingston, Ontario. Curator : Projet de Kristina Thornton Calgary Collects, Art Gallery of Calgary, Calgary, Alberta. Curator : Jeffrey Spalding
Victoria Collects, Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, Victoria, British Columbia. Curator : Mary Jo Hughes (catalogue)

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2011

2010 2009

2008
2007
2006

2005
2003
2001

Front by Front, Museum London, Ontario. Curator : Cassandra Getty
La coexistence des traits. 40 ans de dialogue entre les éditions du Noroît et les artistes visuels, Maison de la culture Mont- Royal, Montreal. Curators : Gilles Daigneault, Marc-André Brouillette.

body / no body, Galerie Bertrand Grimont, Paris, France
Sagamie : l’imprimé numérique en art numérique, Galerie d’art de l’Université de Sherbrooke, Québec. Curator: Nicholas Pitre (booklet)

Les objets secrets de l’atelier, Maison de la Culture Côte-des-Neiges, Montreal, Quebec. Curator : Robert Dufour
Le Tarot de Montréal, Maison de la Culture Mont-Royal, Montreal, Quebec. Curator : Marie-Claude Bouthillier
The Figure Five Ways, Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, New York
Somewhere along the line, Mount Saint Vincent University, Halifax. Curators : Ingrid Jenkner, Katie Belcher (exhibition catalogue)

Terminal’s First Annual Short Video Festival, Department of Art and The Center of Excellence for the Creative Arts, Austin Peay State University, Tennessee
Le corps en images, Galerie d’art Stewart Hall, Pointe-Claire, Québec. Curator : Louise Masson
The Kahlo Legacy: Contemporary Women’s Self-Portraits, Spheris Gallery, Hanover, New Hampshire

Vast Beautiful System (Barely Holding Together), Tower Gallery, Philadelphie, Pennsylvanie. Curator : Alex Kanevsky Body Notes, FOFA Gallery, Concordia University, Montreal, Quebec (booklet)
Dancing to the Invisible Piper: Canadian Contemporary Figure Art, Art Gallery of Mississauga, Ontario
Angela Grossmann, Sophie Jodoin, Mona Shahid, Edward Day Gallery, Toronto, Ontario

Women, James Baird Gallery, St. John’s, Newfoundland
Re-presenting Representation V, Arnot Art Museum, Elmira, New York; Rockwell Museum of Western Art, Corning, New York (booklet)
Made in Canada: Contemporary Art from Montreal, Burke Gallery, Plattsburg State University of New York, Plattsburg, New York, États-Unis

COLLECTIONS
Agnes Etherington Art Centre, Kingston, Ontario
Arkansas Arts Centre, Drawing Collection, Little Rock, Arkansas
Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, Halifax, Nova Scotia
Banque de Montréal, Montreal, Quebec
B. F. Lorenzetti & Associés Inc., Montreal, Quebec
Canderel Archambault, Montreal, Quebec
Colart Collection, Montreal, Quebec
Collection de Banque Nationale du Canada, Montreal, Quebec
Collection d’œuvres d’art de l’Université de Montreal, Quebec
Collection d’œuvres d’art Hydro-Québec, Montreal, Quebec
Collection de la Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec, Montreal, Quebec
Giverny Capital, Montreal, Quebec
Collection Prêt d’œuvres d’art du Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, Quebec Collection TD Art, Toronto
Deloitte Canada, Montreal
Collection Majudia, Montreal, Quebec
Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Quebec
Musée d’art contemporain de Montreal, Quebec
SSF & Associates, Montreal
Private Collections (Canada, France, Switzerland, United Kingdom, United States)

RESIDENCIES
2015 Formats X – Dessin, Formats Bookstore, Montreal, Quebec
2014 Quebec Studio in London, UK, Conseil des arts et lettres du Québec 2009 Centre Sagamie, Alma, Quebec
2004 Pouch Cove, Newfoundland

GRANTS & AWARDS (SELECTION)
2019 Visual Arts Research and Creation Grant, Canada Council for the Arts
2017 Louis-Comtois Prize, City of Montreal and Contemporary Art Galleries Association (AGAC)

Giverny Capital Prize, Montreal, Quebec
Diffusion Grant, Conseil des arts et lettres du Québec

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Visual Arts Project Grant, Canada Council for the Arts
2015 Research and Creation Grant, Conseil des arts et lettres du Québec 2014 Grant – Quebec Studio in London, Conseil des arts et lettres du Québec 2012 SODEC, Visual Artist Grant
2009 Visual Arts Project Grant, Canada Council for the Arts
2008 Bourse de recherche et création, Conseil des arts et lettres du Québec 2007 Travel Grant, Canada Council for the Arts

PUBLICATIONS
2020 Jodoin, Sophie and Anne-Marie Saint-Jean-Aubre. Room(s) to Move: Je, tu, elle. Musée d’art contemporain des Laurentides,

Saint-Jérôme (upcoming catalogue)
2019 Jodoin, Sophie, Les confessions. Les éditions Le Laps, Montreal (artist book)
2011 Jodoin, Sophie et Louise Marois. de peine et de misère. Battat Contemporary, Montreal (publication)

Wesley, Susannah, I felt a cleaving in my mind, Battat Contemporary, Montreal (catalogue)

Landry, Marie-Claude, Petites chroniques des violences ordinaires, Musée d’art de Joliette (booklet)
2009 Belcher, Katie and Ingrid Jenkner, Somewhere along the line, Mount Saint Vincent University, Halifax (catalogue)

Enright, Robert in War Series, Battat Contemporary, Montreal (catalogue)

Lord, Danielle, Menus drames et petits riens, Maison des arts de Laval (booklet)
2008 Urquhart, Jane, in Carte Blanche Vol.2: Painting, Magenta Publishing for the Arts, Toronto (publication) Roenisch, Clint, in Carte Blanche Vol.2: Painting, Magenta Publishing for the Arts, Toronto (publication)

2007 Blatherwick, David and Isa Tousignant, Regiment, McClure Gallery, Montreal (booklet) Capell, David, Regiment, Nanaimo Art Gallery, British Columbia (booklet)

2006 Beavis, Lynn, Body Notes/Échos corporels, FOFA Gallery, Concordia University, Montreal (booklet) 2004 Jodoin, Sophie and Bernard Lamarche, Drawing Shadows: Portraits of my Mother, Montreal (book) 2001 O’Hern, D. John, Re-Representation V, Arnot Art Museum, Elmira, New York (catalogue)
2000 De Facendia, Dario, Sophie Jodoin, Galerie de Bellefeuille, Montreal, 2000 (catalogue)

1994 Lawrence, Robin, Drawing Plus, Open Space, Victoria, British Columbia (booklet)
1993 Basha, Régine, The Space Between/L’Entrespace, Centre Saidye Bronfman, Montreal (catalogue)

MEDIA (SELECTION)
2018 Charron, Marie-Ève. “Sophie Jodoin au MACL : corps en examen”, Le Devoir, July 14, 2018.

Clément, Éric. “Sophie Jodoin : raffinement et profondeur”, La Presse, July 20, 2018.

Dubois, Anne-Marie. “Je est une autre Room(s) to move: je, tu, elle de Sophie Jodoin”, ESSE, no 94 (Fall 2018) 2017 Charron, Marie-Ève. “La vie intime d’un livre didactique”, Le Devoir, March 25, 2017.

Clément, Éric. “Prix Pierre-Ayot et Louis-Comtois”, La Presse +, December 8, 2017. Online.
Hardy, Dominic. “Sophie Jodoin, il faut qu’elle sache”, ESSE, no 90 (Spring/Summer 2017) Mavrikakis, Nicolas. “Prendre le pouls de l’oeuvre de Sophie Jodoin”, Le Devoir, October 14, 2017.

2015 Charron, Marie-Ève. “Le dessin comme processus ouvert”, Le Devoir, May 16, 2015.
Clément, Éric. “Virée des galeries : les autres expos”, La Presse, November 1, 2015. Online.
Genda, Dagmara. “Sophie Jodoin Turns a Forensic Eye to the Poetic”, Canadian Art, May 13, 2015. Online.
–.Picturing Nothing: Reading the Drawings of Sophie Jodoin Through The Words of Samuel Beckett”, MOMUS, July 29, 2015. Online.

2014 Campbell, James. “Sophie Jodoin & Jacinthe Lessard L-”, Magenta Magazine, Volume 5, No.2. (Summer 2014) Online.
F. Schuetze, Christopher. “A Century of War Rendered in Art”, The New York Times – International Arts, October 16, 2014. Mavrikakis, Nicolas. “Regards préfabriqués”, Le Devoir, August 16, 2014.
Munn, Dan. “how permanent is permanent”, ESSE, no 81 (Spring 2014)

2013 Enright, Robert. “Formal Intimacies”, Border Crossings, no. 128 (December 2013)
2012 Hoekstra, Matthew. “Artist draws human condition in black & white”, Richmond Review, June 21, 2012. 2011 Campbell, James. “Sophie Jodoin”, Magenta Magazine, Volume 2, no 2 (Spring 2011) Online.

Gessell, Paul. “The art of war”, The Ottawa Citizen, November 11, 2011.
Moeder, Claire. “Sophie Jodoin ; la part manquante”, Ratsdeville, January 28, 2011. Online.
Malo, Kit. “Sophie Jodoin’s Uncanny Valley: A Road-trip through the Allusions and Illusions of You Have to Get a Whole to Get a Little”, Inside The Frozen Mammoth, January 27, 2011.

2010 Johnson, Mia. “Sophie Jodoin: The Cherished Ones”, Preview, November 4, 2010. Online. Kenins, Laura. “Drawing the Line”, Visual Arts News (Spring 2010)

2009 Campbell, James. “Haunted: The Uncanny in the Drawings of Sophie Jodoin”, ETC, no 87 (Spring 2009)
Grande, John. “Sophie Jodoin – Headgames: Hoods, Helmets & Gasmasks”, Vie des arts, no 225 (Summer 2009)

2005 Enright, Robert. “Portrait of the Artist as Her Subjects”, Border Crossings, no 96 (November 2005) Grande, John. “Personne-Persona”, Vie des arts, no 200 (Fall 2005)
Recurt, Elisabeth. “Entre réalité et désir de mémoire”, ETC, no 69 (Spring 2005)