Jean Côte's art

Dans Les traversées du temps, le mercredi 20 avril 2005

Jean Côté's art captures something of that brief fleeting nature of time. His assemblages are unique, in that they are painterly, yet integrate found materials - both man-made and natural. The fusion of time worn objects, of rust, natural decay, and lively painting, is an edifying painterly amalgam that reminds us that life, however we remember it, or live it, can, like these multi-media works, embody some very basic principles of freedom.

Jean Côté communicates, subtly, with modesty, and with simplicity that some would call spiritual. The subliminal message in all Côté's art, is that we cannot control life, nor capture experience in its entirely. These visual fragments ecidence Jean Côté's will to live.

Appearance and reality merge and somewhere between past and future, we find ourselves in a present. This moment we see is a brief inspirational interlude... Jean Côté's experiential material personification. This art embodies a world that, even as it is configured and guaged, contains something of that ephemeral sense that life is or can be. Côté is confident. He uses la matière - surfaces and textures and colour - presents a window into infinity.

John K. Grande