Robert Marchessault | Les Murs Vivants
Robert Marchessault | Les Murs Vivants
Opening Reception: Saturday, September 12, 2 - 4 PM | Artist in Attendance
September 10 - October 5, 2026
Bau-Xi Gallery | Dufferin
1384 Dufferin Street, Toronto | Upper Gallery
This September, Bau-Xi Gallery | Dufferin presents Les Murs Vivants, a new series by Robert Marchessault inspired by the vertical gardens he encountered in Aix-en-Provence. Building on his longstanding paintings of trees and foliage, Marchessault distills the landscape to its essential forms, eliminating trunks and branches to focus on the movement, rhythm, and energy of dense fields of greenery. Reflecting his own approach to gardening, these paintings explore the pleasure of arranging and observing the natural world, inviting the viewer’s eye to move through each composition as one might through a garden.
Artist statement:
I was in Aix-en-Provence last year, and while following a shortcut back to my apartment, a highway overpass blew my mind. The sight of the unexpected combined with unformed concepts I was mulling about gardening, plants and painting. Before me, on the vertical supporting walls of the overpass was a dense profusion of foliage. It was not wild vines growing up the sides; it was a deliberately designed and installed “mur vegetal” by perhaps the world's most famous vertical garden designer, Paris-based botanist Patrick Blanc.
I instantly visualized these patterns of foliage as a painting I knew would challenge me but might also extend the work I had been doing with my paintings of trees. Over the years, these tree paintings were completed by painting the leaves and foliage. Suddenly I saw a new vision of foliage hanging off of walls. I would eliminate the trunks and branches and present only the elegant dance of leafy greenery. This distillation from my tree paintings would keep the flows of energy I loved with trees but would be lighter, more on the picture plane. I titled the idea Mur Vivant (living wall).
This exhibition presents a selection from the Mur Vivant series that I began in December 2025. Part of the challenge of making these works was the need to invent a new technique that would express the ideas I was investigating. Through trial and error and a lot of painting time, I found the means to emphasize the flat wall of foliage pressing up against the picture plane. Designing the compositions required organizing the shapes, sizes and patterns so that they would lead a viewer’s eye through the piece in a way that echoes how I look at gardens. I realized that there were similarities in the way I plant and organize my own gardens and these paintings. This includes the reason I love and grow gardens, simply for the pure pleasure of it. – Robert Marchessault