M. LeBlanc is proud to present ‘Cold Room,’ the gallery’s second solo exhibition with the Montréal-based painter Vincent Larouche. Comprising the exhibition are Larouche’s most recent paintings. ‘Cold Room’ is on view June 7th - July 12th, 2025.
‘Cold Room’ refers to a number of places for Larouche. It is the abattoir. It is the morgue. It is the wine cellar. A place of disassembly, of investigation, and of slow procedural development. Naturally, for Larouche, it is also the studio. Since his first exhibition at the gallery in 2022 - titled 'FATHERS' - Larouche has sought with great precision to deconstruct his practice, examine its elements, and begin the laborious process of piecing together his understanding of painting again. To excavate, to stretch, to insert, to overexpose—these are some of the terms that resonate within the conceptual framework of Larouche’s ‘Cold Room’.
The exhibited works speak to a subversion, a displacement, rooted in an intention to foil the gaze. By offering up a mirror, the works invite a gaze that is immediately misdirected—transforming us into voyeurs of the subterranean dramas of aesthetics. As viewers, we are trapped. We infiltrate a world already probed. We are abandoned in the labyrinth of a place that has been scoured, carved with a scalpel. The inquisitive gaze that so obsessed the artist becomes our own. The frictions embedded in painterly language—the dynamic interplay and superposition of modes of painting—participate in a transgression of conventional codes and contribute to the amplification of the affective intensity that permeates the ‘’Cold Room’’.
Vincent Larouche (Canadian, b. 1995) lives and works in Montréal, Québec, Canada. Recent solo exhibitions of Larouche’s work include à l'extérieur (2023) at No Gallery, New York; FATHERS (2022) at M. LeBlanc, Chicago; Café de Flore (2021) at Interstate Projects, Brooklyn; and Ocelle (2020) curated by Caroline Andrieux at Fonderie Darling, Montréal. Larouche has received the Québec Arts Council Grant (2022), Canada Arts Council Grant (2021), and The Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Grant (2019). He received a BFA in painting (with great distinction) from Concordia University in 2019.
