Fabian Jean

Waddington's Auction House Biography and Notes

Quebec-based painter Fabian Jean's works are at once quietly surreal and intimately familiar, taking formal cues from historical sources and infused with dreamlike interventions - occupying a space somewhere between Sandro Botticelli and Rene Magritte. An array of carefully choreographed formal, even conservative subjects - food-laden still lives, portraits of horses and hounds - are finely rendered in brightly radiant palettes. They are infiltrated and destabilized with surreal additions, giving the impression of a garden party gone awry: a glass of wine is spilled, a dog climbs over the table, a regal creature stands on a pile of books. Ribbons, butterflies, hummingbirds, or branches with fruit seem to weightlessly float across the scenes, flattening the picture plane - these are paintings that emphatically declare that they are paintings.