TIAN Contemporain pleased to present In Mutual Light, a group exhibition featuring the works of Brandon Dalmer (Montreal), Elise Thompson (Brooklyn) and Elisabeth Picard (Montreal). The pieces in this exhibition respond to the conditions of the contemporary media age through painted and sculptural works, developing practices that integrate, translate, and critically engage with technical processes. Here, the concept of technē—the embodied act of making through art, skill, and craft—emerges

as the critical site of innovation.

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Under the purview of increasingly fluid boundaries around technical systems, the artists in this exhibition converge around questions of opacity and transparency, examining what is revealed, concealed, or transformed in the act of making. This tension is articulated through deliberate manipulations of process and material, where an uncanny liminality between expectation and form becomes both aesthetic strategy and conceptual inquiry. Brandon Dalmer’s painted works explore retro-nostalgia and the friction between digital and analog modes of image production. Working from digitally manipulated images that are ultimately realized as acrylic paintings, his practice foregrounds the oscillation between computational systems and human gesture. Elise Thompson’s subtle yet psychologically layered compositions elegantly probe notions of interiority, exteriority, and surface. Each painting contains multiple strata that complicate perception of depth and materiality. Through the use of Dura-Lar and clear vinyl as integral materials, and a prismatic color palette informed by science fiction and animation, her works evoke hyperreal spatial conditions that linger between virtual and physical realities. Elisabeth Picard’s sculptural practice draws from design, architecture, and natural science, employing textile techniques to reimagine industrial materials, generating hybrid textures and structures while drawing lines of continuity between organic and synthetic forms.

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ARTIST BIOGRAPHIES

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Brandon Dalmer (b. 1984) obtained a bachelor’s in fine arts from Alberta University of

the Arts (2007) and completed his masters in painting at Concordia University in 2023.

Working at the intersection of digital and physical mediums, Dalmer’s practice investi-

gates the correlation between these two realms by exploring the impact of the artificial

on our sense of perception. He has previously exhibited at the Power Plant

Contemporary Art Gallery in Toronto, the Art Gallery of Calgary, Art Mûr, and Galerie

Éphémère.

 

Elisabeth Picard (b. 1981) lives in Montreal and holds a Master of Fine Arts degree

with a concentration in Fiber from Concordia University. For 20 years, she has exhibited

in Quebec, Ontario, and internationally (Cuba, France, and Lithuania), and her work has

been featured in several publications. She has participated in the Mutek Festival (SAT),

the Redbull Music Academy (Phi Centre), Joueuses/Joueurs (Montreal Museum of Fine

Arts), the National Biennial of Contemporary Sculpture (Trois-Rivières), the Subtle

Technologies Festival (Toronto), and the Banquet du Salon Révélations du Grand Palais

(Paris), among others.

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Elise Thompson (b. 1988) received a BFA from Northern Kentucky University in 2010 and a MFA from Florida State University in 2016. She attended the Boom Gallery Fellowship + Residency in Cincinnati, OH, in 2015 via an FSU Exceptional Opportunities Award and received the Mary Ola Reynolds Miller Scholarship in Visual Arts in 2016. She was an honorable mention and a finalist for the Innovate Grant in 2022 and for the MyMA Grant in 2024, selected by Andrew Rafacz.