Rémi Landry (Mazzuolo), painter and sculptor lives in the Greater Montreal region. After high school, his desire to create, brought him to traditional trades studies. Thus, in the early 2000's, he completed professional training in cabinetmaking and furniture finishing. That is where he was introduced to woodcarving and color finishing. His career path eventually took him far from the arts, as he joined the public services.
For a long time hampered by the feeling and fear of being different, he nevertheless juggles with the idea of creating. It is only in 2018 that the return to the roots takes place. The call is brutal and liberating. This feeling of being different then becomes the cornerstone of his creative process, as he learns about resin, which he combines with sculpture. From then on, he signed his works "Mazzuolo", "mallet" in Italian. He played with colors in the casting process. The process requires a lot of spontaneity on the part of the artist, who sees his work evolve during the execution. He explores textures, colours, and cell effects by overlaying layers, which reveals the depth of the material. Antagonistically, he traditionally sculpts wood with precision and control. Sometimes these two worlds meet on a painting and the result is captivating: a work that we admire as a whole, then which attracts us in its details, until we want to touch it to grasp its depth, as if the eye were not enough. When they are not abstract, his works are inspired by nature, water, and animals.
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His creative process is based on a perpetual search for unusual aesthetic effects resulting from the characteristics of his favorite medium, resin. His approach is now engaged in a dialogue between the concrete and the abstract, a dialogue that tends to evoke, in a subtle way, a meaning, a philosophy intrinsically linked to the work. The realization of his works combines his technical know-how and imagination.
The artist is stimulated by the realization of paintings of large and very large formats where the controlled reflection of light participates in the pictorial style. With ideas in mind, he measures and prepare the volumes of resins and pigments he needs to give them life. Next, he pours the multiple layers of pigmented resin into a frame, a wedge, around a wooden support. Once the resin is poured, before it hardens, he paints with a palette knife, creating chromatic and textural effects. After much experimentation, he is able to master the medium and interact with it, while remaining reactive to the here and now of creation.
To the superimposition of coloured layers, which he levels according to his prior visualization, is added the investment of a third dimension. By incorporating wood carvings or inlaying objects (usually real stones and precious metals), he brings elements of his paintings out of the frame and influence the reflection of light. It is the hardening of the resin (the cure) that allows the inlays to literally merge with the artwork.