Wanderings is an installation of portraits resulting from a drawing and relational art performance conducted in three Montreal neighborhoods: Plateau-Mont-Royal, Ville-Marie, and Ahuntsic-Cartierville.
Between 2024 and 2025, Octavio Rüest traveled through these neighborhoods to meet residents and create their portraits with his mobile studio, consisting of a painting easel pulled by a bicycle. Imbued with a sensitive approach towards individuals often absent from dominant representations, the work embodies a genuine notion of care, made visible through a slow and complex creative process.
Déambulations celebrates the ordinary aspects of daily life while creating a human landscape rooted in the cultural and social diversity that reflects the rich living heritage of Quebec.
Octavio Rüest is an artist who explores the connections between drawing, sculpture, and public space. His practice focuses on social and environmental issues as well as our way of inhabiting the city.
Through human-scale works, he transforms everyday scenes into invitations to slow down, observe, and reflect. By playing with proportions and line drawing, he creates installations that blur the boundary between art and reality, while stimulating the visitors' imagination.
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Octavio Rüest