Brent Wadden

Front Space

Almine Rech is pleased to present two solo exhibitions by artist Brent Wadden at Almine Rech Paris, Turenne and in November at Almine Rech Brussels.

Born in 1979 in Nova Scotia, Canada, Wadden comes from a working-class background. His father and uncle were fishermen, bound to the cycles of the sea. He grew up watching them repeat gestures, day after day — hauling, knotting, mending, repairing. Skills passed down, inherited through repetition. For Wadden, the loom becomes a parallel stage: the choreography of labor translated to canvas.

Each summer, he returns to Nova Scotia — a ritual, almost a pilgrimage, to the land where his identity was first woven. Last summer, a wrong turn on a coastal road led him to an unknown beach, untouched and paradisiacal. This accidental discovery opened onto an image both real and imagined: the vision of his native land as he had always carried it within himself, both origin and horizon. It is no coincidence that the Paris exhibition bears the title Main-à-Dieu — the name of the nearby fishing village — as if to anchor this return to his roots in the very name of the show.

—Boris Bergmann, writer.