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PIERRE COUPEY
ACROSS I BETWEEN I WITHIN
Dion Kliner is a sculptor, curator and writer based in Vancouver. His most recent exhibition took place at the
Burrard Art Foundation.
Notes
1. Robert Storr. Robert Ryman. London / New York: Tate Gallery / Museum of Modern Art, 1993.
2. Robert Ryman, statement for Art in Process, Finch College Museum of Art, New York, 1969.
3. Pierre Coupey, from “Statements for Measures.”
4. In this analysis the relationship of the terms “field and focus” and “periphery and center” are being used analogously. The importance of the
relationship between periphery and center in Coupey’s work seems to have grown in relevance, and relates him to the artist Robert Smithson. For
Smithson, the dialectic between periphery and center marks his work and thinking as a central preoccupation. Although unrelated stylistically,
there are a remarkable number of resonant connections between Coupey and Smithson, which are touched on throughout this essay.
5. Pierre Coupey, from “Statements for Measures.”
6. Pierre Coupey in correspondence with Dion Kliner, 2016.
7. Ralph Waldo Emerson. Nature. New York: Penguin, 2008.
8. “The wet mind enjoys ‘pools and stains’ of paint. ‘Paint’ itself appears to be a kind of liquefaction. Such wet eyes love to look on melting,
dissolving, soaking surfaces that give the illusion at times of tending toward a gaseousness, atomization or fogginess. This watery syntax is at
times related to the ‘canvas support’.” Robert Smithson. “A Sedimentation of the Mind: Earth Projects.” Artforum (September, 1969) 88.
9. William Carlos Williams. “To a Dog Injured in the Street.” The Desert Music and Other Poems. New York: Random, 1954. Williams was also 2 Lac en Coeur (2017), oil on canvas, 80 × 64 in
Smithson’s pediatrician in Rutherford, NJ where they both lived.
10. John Berger. “The White Bird.” The Sense of Sight. New York: Vintage, 1985.
Helen Frankenthaler, Morris Louis, Cy Twombly, On the other side is creating beauty. Both are
Claude Monet. With the Stanzas, I am most reminded principled responses that stress art having a moral
of Pollock at his best (when he was using a brush). component, artists having personal responsibility,
and what used to be called humanism. Motivated by a
Because of Coupey’s lists, I don’t believe his search righteous indignation and the conviction that art can
for what paint can do, or what he can do with paint, is be serious, profound and life affirming rather than life
the whole point of why he paints and exhibits. Neither denying, Coupey opts for an aesthetic of resistance.
is the point to reveal what he’s discovered. Paint is William Carlos Williams’ poem To a Dog Injured in the
not all that Coupey wants to show, it is not all that Street is one of Coupey’s touchstones in this regard.
he wants us to see. Towards the top of a stairway The poem concludes, “René Char / you are poet who
in Coupey’s home is a small, original print by Goya, believes / in the power of beauty / to right all wrongs.
La Tauromaquia No. 2, Another Way of Hunting on / I believe it also. / With invention and courage / we
Foot. Two men push spears deeply into a bull from shall surpass / the pitiful dumb beasts, / let all men
opposite sides. One pushes into the neck, just in front believe it, / as you have taught me also / to believe
of the bull’s left shoulder. The other pushes through it.”9 The critic and poet John Berger said very much
the ribs between shoulder and hip. The bull is down the same in his essay The White Bird: “We live in a
on one knee, mortally wounded and effectively world of suffering in which evil is rampant, a world
pinned in place. By their wide-legged stance, the two whose events do not confirm our Being, a world
men are equally immobilized, all three held in place that has to be resisted. It is in this situation that the
until death. Had these actions been performed in a aesthetic moment offers hope.” 10 For Coupey, art at
bullring as tauromaquia suggests, they would be part its best stands against violence as a defiant response
of a ritualized performance that, like it or not, has an to the outrages of barbarism committed against
important place in Spanish culture. But the scene civilization. Without trying to see Coupey’s paintings
does not take place in a bullring, it takes place in a through Coupey’s eyes, and without putting words
nondescript, but pleasing landscape. Neither is it a into his mouth, what I see when I look at his paintings,
hunting scene, even though Goya titles it otherwise. and believe he is showing us, is an artist building a
Performed outside of these contexts, what Goya bulwark against Darkness, mark by mark, canvas by
depicts is a brutality reminiscent of his Disasters canvas.
of War, as if Spain herself were being slaughtered.
Bearing witness by recording brutality is one side
of maintaining one’s humanity and standing against
violence.
Dion Kliner is a sculptor, curator and writer based in Vancouver. His most recent exhibition took place at the
Burrard Art Foundation.
Notes
1. Robert Storr. Robert Ryman. London / New York: Tate Gallery / Museum of Modern Art, 1993.
2. Robert Ryman, statement for Art in Process, Finch College Museum of Art, New York, 1969.
3. Pierre Coupey, from “Statements for Measures.”
4. In this analysis the relationship of the terms “field and focus” and “periphery and center” are being used analogously. The importance of the
relationship between periphery and center in Coupey’s work seems to have grown in relevance, and relates him to the artist Robert Smithson. For
Smithson, the dialectic between periphery and center marks his work and thinking as a central preoccupation. Although unrelated stylistically,
there are a remarkable number of resonant connections between Coupey and Smithson, which are touched on throughout this essay.
5. Pierre Coupey, from “Statements for Measures.”
6. Pierre Coupey in correspondence with Dion Kliner, 2016.
7. Ralph Waldo Emerson. Nature. New York: Penguin, 2008.
8. “The wet mind enjoys ‘pools and stains’ of paint. ‘Paint’ itself appears to be a kind of liquefaction. Such wet eyes love to look on melting,
dissolving, soaking surfaces that give the illusion at times of tending toward a gaseousness, atomization or fogginess. This watery syntax is at
times related to the ‘canvas support’.” Robert Smithson. “A Sedimentation of the Mind: Earth Projects.” Artforum (September, 1969) 88.
9. William Carlos Williams. “To a Dog Injured in the Street.” The Desert Music and Other Poems. New York: Random, 1954. Williams was also 2 Lac en Coeur (2017), oil on canvas, 80 × 64 in
Smithson’s pediatrician in Rutherford, NJ where they both lived.
10. John Berger. “The White Bird.” The Sense of Sight. New York: Vintage, 1985.
3 Achilles’ Shield I (2017), oil on canvas, 42 × 42 in 4 Achilles’ Shield II (2017), oil on canvas, 42 × 42 in
3 Achilles’ Shield I (2017), oil on canvas, 42 × 42 in 4 Achilles’ Shield II (2017), oil on canvas, 42 × 42 in
5 Stanza XIX (2016), oil & collage on Arches paper, 30 × 23 in 6 Stanza XX (2016), oil & collage on Arches paper, 30 × 23 in
5 Stanza XIX (2016), oil & collage on Arches paper, 30 × 23 in 6 Stanza XX (2016), oil & collage on Arches paper, 30 × 23 in
7 Untitled XXVIII (2016), oil on canvas, 45 × 90 in (diptych)
7 Untitled XXVIII (2016), oil on canvas, 45 × 90 in (diptych)
8 Rock Pool II (2017), oil on canvas, 80 × 64 in 9 Rock Pool I (2017), oil on canvas, 80 × 64 in
8 Rock Pool II (2017), oil on canvas, 80 × 64 in 9 Rock Pool I (2017), oil on canvas, 80 × 64 in
10 Untitled XXIX (Summer) (2016), oil on canvas, 76 × 90 in 11 Rock Pool III (2017), oil on canvas, 76 × 90 in
10 Untitled XXIX (Summer) (2016), oil on canvas, 76 × 90 in 11 Rock Pool III (2017), oil on canvas, 76 × 90 in
12 Stanza XXVII (2016), oil on Arches paper, 23 × 30 in 13 Stanza XXXVI (2016), oil on Arches paper, 23 × 30 in
12 Stanza XXVII (2016), oil on Arches paper, 23 × 30 in 13 Stanza XXXVI (2016), oil on Arches paper, 23 × 30 in
14 Stanza XXXI (2016), oil on Arches paper, 23 × 30 in 15 Stanza XVII (2016), oil on Arches paper, 23 × 30 in
14 Stanza XXXI (2016), oil on Arches paper, 23 × 30 in 15 Stanza XVII (2016), oil on Arches paper, 23 × 30 in
16 Untitled XIX (2016), oil on linen over panel, 45 × 90 in (diptych)
16 Untitled XIX (2016), oil on linen over panel, 45 × 90 in (diptych)
PIERRE COUPEY CORPORATE COLLECTIONS
Aldo Group, Montreal Denbigh Fine Art Services, Vancouver Metrix Insurance, Vancouver
Barometer Capital, Toronto Hyatt Regency, New Orleans North Shore News, North Vancouver
bcIMC, Calgary Image This Photo, Vancouver Protechnical Insurance, Vancouver
EDUCATION bcIMC, Vancouver Kernaghan Adjusters, Vancouver RSVP Reservations, Vancouver
Christopher Investments, Vancouver Koerner Graduate Student Center, UBC, Vancouver Securiguard Services, Vancouver
1992 Art Institute, Capilano University, Vancouver, BC, Canada Citibank Canada, Toronto Lower Canada College, Montreal Toronto-Dominion Bank, Toronto
1971 MA, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada College & Institute Educators Association, McCullough O’Connor Irwin, Vancouver Larry Young & Associates, Vancouver
1964-65 Académie Julian / Atelier 17, Paris, France Vancouver McGill Student Society, McGill University, Montreal
1964 BA, McGill University, Montreal, QC, Canada
1959-60 Lower Canada College, Montreal, QC, Canada