Pierre Coupey, “Recent Work”

Three principles shape my practice and each emphasizes the open-ended process of making paintings and texts: development by transformation (Stanley William Hayter); form is never more than an extension of content (Robert Creeley via Charles Olson); the medium is the message (Marshall McLuhan).

In the studio the search is for discovery through proprioception (sensibility within the organism by movement of its own tissue), that is, the intelligence of the body. In my practice it isn’t reason over passion, or passion over reason, but reason with passion. Not depiction of “the real” but re-enactment of the real through the proprioception of rimed experience, language, landscape and art.

– Pierre Coupey

Pierre Coupey’s work has received numerous awards, grants and commissions, including grants from the Conseil des Arts du Québec, the Canada Council, the British Columbia Arts Council, and the Audain Foundation for the Arts. In 2013 he received the Distinguished Artist Award from FANS.

His work has been exhibited in over 30 solo and 40 group shows nationally and internationally, and is represented in numerous private collections in Canada, the United States, Japan and Europe, and in corporate, university and public collections across Canada. Significant public collections include the Burnaby Art Gallery, the Canada Council Art Bank, the Kelowna Art Gallery, Simon Fraser University Art Gallery, University of Guelph Collection, the University of Lethbridge Art Gallery and the Vancouver Art Gallery.