Ciel variable presents the artworks created and acquired during its second fund-raising campaign, conducted in 2015–16. In the same spirit as Sitegeist, the 2012–13 campaign, Artgeist proposed that collectors support the magazine by acquiring an original work created specifically for them. This project also offered them the opportunity to meet with an artist of their choice in order to discuss their respective aesthetic motivations and thus to define the parameters of the work to be produced.

This second campaign was focused around the theme of the portrait, understood in the broadest way possible – a self-portrait, or a portrait of loved ones, or even a portrait of someone with an important symbolic value. One might even have conceived of an image evoking someone absent through an object or a place. Free Figures was open to such diversity of sensibilities and possible interpretations of the portrait.

The resulting artworks brought a number of these possibilities to life. Angela Grauerholz and Pascal Grandmaison played along for collector Jack Lazare by each proposing a close-up portrait of women, Deux dames de Venise and Action 2, that was situated more in the realm of the emblematic than the personal. The encounter between Éliane Excoffier and Joanie Lapalme resulted in an evocative portrait: a shot of Joanie taken from the back in a field, on which a close-up of a face was superimposed. Philippe Lamarre and Nathalie Goyette chose, with Benoît Aquin, to highlight Nathalie, but in relative darkness, at a distance, and as if encased in a tangle of trees and branches. For Annie Boisvert and Benoît Lacoste Bienvenue, Marisa Portolese produced a studio portrait of their daughter Sophia, somewhat in Notmanesque style, before a painted landscape next to a bouquet of flowers.

We are infinitely grateful to these artists and collectors who agreed to support the magazine by engaging in the process of encounters and creation. Each of them also wrote a few words to accompany the artworks that we present here. Our sincere thanks also go to the gallery owners who represent these artists and to our partner, ENCADREX, which generously framed the works.

Artworks created as part of the fund-raising campaign ARTGEIST II – FREE FIGURES (2015-2016)

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