TIAN Contemporain is pleased to present waking dream wanderers: where are you drifting? a solo exhibition by Canadian artist Nicole Crozier. This new body of work explores camouflage, illusion, and the shifting truth value of images. Drawing from their research into the historical use of optics in figurative painting, Crozier examines how visual technologies shape our understanding of what is visible, real, and legible. Highlighting the instability of representation and the cultural myths carried by images that appear to reflect the world “as is.”, their works reveal a central tension arising from the flattening and translation of three-dimensional forms into two-dimensional surfaces. Crozier treats this loss of depth and fidelity as an opportunity for compositional reinvention. What disappears in translation reappears through optical play, carefully calibrated illusions, and deliberate intervention.

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Crozier’s layered compositions function as portals or “theatres of the mind,” offering space for viewers to pause, reflect, and consider reality as an ongoing fabrication. The dual nature of their photographic and painterly compositions allows for moments of rupture that draw attention to the techniques and strategies used to index and interpret the world. Their process begins with the construction of small-scale maquettes onto which digital images are projected. These environments are then photographed or translated to painting to create layered scenes of mediated reality, where size, scale, and perspective shift in unexpected ways. Camouflage operates as both theme and metaphor, bridging the animal and human worlds, evoking mutable masks, and shifting environments and movements between the visible and the invisible. Crozier’s works inhabit this “chameleonic haze,” where concealment and revelation unfold simultaneously.

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BIOGRAPHY

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Nicole Crozier (she/they) holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts (University of Ottawa) and a graduate certificate in Arts Management (Centennial College). Currently pursuing a Masters in Fine Arts in painting and drawing at Concordia University, they are prioritizing experimentation in their work, following curiosity into new corners of conceptual and material practice.

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In Canada, Nicole’s work has been shown throughout Ontario and Quebec, including at Cambridge Art Galleries, Fashion Art Toronto, Nuit Blanche Toronto, Aurora Cultural Centre, Art Mur, and Art Toronto, among others. They have also shown internationally at the SPRING/BREAK art fair in NYC-NY and at kaktus art centre in Akureyri-Iceland, in collaboration with the Table Collective. They are based in Montreal.