Alexandre Zerbé was born in Montréal, in 1974. Zerbé paints and draws every day. Inspired by photographs he takes of his own city or from the ones he travels to, Zerbé chooses surprising viewpoints rather than the obviously traditional scenes. He is interested in the geometry of the urban landscape, the vertical and horizontal intersections of lines that make up a modern city. Whether the subject is a person, a room’s interior or a cityscape, every part of the composition claims your attention at once. Your gaze moves across the image, settling nowhere. In a view through a window, chimney tops, telephone wires and balconies all seem equally meaningful and this experience of registering all of the information at once is akin to physically being in the scene.

Zerbé’s technique is stylized: he usually sketches compositions before beginning to paint, mindful not to “over-finish” a piece as he wants the liveliness of the sketch to remain visible. His purposely discernable brushstrokes, boldly unpredictable colour choices like bright red skies, black contour lines adopted from the essence of drawing, and the calligraphy of his signature are all markers of his singular style.