FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

ALINE SETTON

Où, Where, Onde

October 8 to 31, 2026
Opening reception: Thursday, October 8, 5 to 8 pm
Duran Contemporain, Montreal

Duran Contemporain is pleased to present Où, Where, Onde, Aline Setton’s first solo exhibition at the gallery, on view from October 8 to 31, 2026. The exhibition follows the gallery’s solo presentation of Setton at Art Toronto in 2025, where her work received an enthusiastic response.

In Où, Where, Onde, Setton continues her exploration of architecture, landscape and perception by constructing spaces that appear at once familiar and impossible to locate. Walls, windows, pools, terraces, vegetation and horizons form environments that initially seem coherent, only to gradually reveal their contradictions. Perspectives shift, planes overlap, and the boundaries between interior and exterior become uncertain.

The exhibition title asks the same question three times: Où, Where, Onde. French, English and Portuguese evoke different geographies within the artist’s experience, yet repeating the question brings us no closer to a precise location. Instead, it emphasizes the ambiguity that runs through the paintings. Setton does not depict existing places. She constructs new ones from fragments of architecture, landscape, memory and invention.

“When I presented Aline’s work at Art Toronto last year, what struck me was the way visitors instinctively tried to locate themselves within her paintings. They recognized something without necessarily being able to identify it. For this exhibition, I wanted to heighten that sensation. The works give us enough information to believe in the place, and then prevent us from locating it completely. Où, Where, Onde ultimately asks a very simple question: what makes us believe that a place is real?”

Andres Duran, Director, Duran Contemporain

The exhibition is conceived as a movement through different spaces and atmospheres. From one painting to another, the eye encounters the colour of a wall, an opening onto a landscape, the surface of water, a curtain or a particular quality of light. These elements operate like fragments of memory. We recognize their presence without necessarily being able to reconstruct the place to which they belong.

Through this new body of work, Setton transforms architecture into an instrument of perception rather than simply a subject to be represented. Her paintings consider how we mentally construct space and how painting can make credible something that might never be able to exist.

Ultimately, Où, Where, Onde seeks to leave the viewer with a strange sensation: that of recognizing a place they have never been.

Aline Setton, Où, Where, Onde
October 8 to 31, 2026
Opening reception: Thursday, October 8, 5 to 8 pm
Duran Contemporain
372 Sainte-Catherine Street West, Suite 525
Montreal, Quebec