Andréanne Godin
48.312403, -78.048948

From November 1 to December 22

Andréanne Godin challenges the boundaries of drawing to capture and express her elusive feelings. She focuses on her own experiences in environments that have influenced and marked her life. In her most recent body of work, 48.312403, -78.048948, the artist turns her gaze towards a liminal space where light is submerged.

Beneath the waters of Abitibian lakes, light diffracts and is dissolves into the semi-opaque hues, mingling with organic particles suspended in the darkness of the depths. On the surface, sparkling beams, iridescent glows, and elusive reverberations appear in turn. Diluted, the sun's reflections seem to be absorbed by the darkness of the clayey, sandy, or rocky lake beds. The perspectives are marked by swirling halos and as we descend, it becomes difficult to find our bearings underwater. However, a rope tied at every metre leads the way. During her free dives, Godin finds herself alone. She experiences a sort of underwater introspection. This underwater observation echo’s the moment when we close our eyes. 

Andréanne Godin's approach goes beyond simple photographic documentation. During her explorations, she captures ineffable colorful palettes. Ochre hues and oxidized mineral shades emerge and move from golden browns to vermilion reds and then burgundy, till we brush against ink black. The colors wash over the artist's body. It is this optical phenomenon—this decanting between light and water—that she attempts to materialize. She submerges herself to capture what the eye cannot hold onto for long. The gesture becomes an extension of the gaze, but also of the hand. The act is also one of sampling. From her descents, she not only collects luminous impressions, but also extracts material from the lake: the clay left behind by the Ojibway glacial lake.

Here, in the context of her exhibition at Nicolas Robert Gallery, she has collected earth from the lake’s bed to transform into drawing tools—pastels—which become the vectors of a return to the surface. More than three hundred pastel sticks have been shaped by adding natural powdered pigments to the clay. The illuminated sticks are displayed in handcrafted wooden boxes, like a sampling of colours that are usually (im)perceptible. Several shades and their variations are thus made visible, piling up like layers of water. These pastels will be used for other future projects—a logical continuation of the present corpus. The installation reveals the stages of an evolving process. It exposes the production as it progresses. The tool-artworks support the act of their own creation. The manual auger used to extract the clay has been hand built in ceramic. 

The experiences that led Godin to explore colourful underwater fields are also present in the exhibition space. A huge drawing, on a human scale, shows a cascade of paper depicting a friend of the artist swimming in the Saint-Laurence River. There she is, radiant. She reveals herself delicately, swimming through meticulous successive strokes that are diffuse and sensitive. The thoughtful drawing becomes the submerged place where light re-emerges. The hand transposes it, but the marks remain imbued with murky layers and chromatic density.

Underwater, the artist exists. She refocuses on the essence of the experience—her presence and her relationship with the environment. She offers us this immersion in her work, in everything that precedes the artworks. It is like a visit to the studio in the depths of wandering thoughts. Through this immersion, the formal and material connections reveal themselves. 

-Jean-Michel Quirion, 2025