Join us at the Guild for Gerald Beaulieu‘s fantastic exhibit, “Superheroes”

The theme of Superheroes for me references both a passion for the comic book genre and a fascination of the extraordinary. I want these figures all to be larger than life, displaying an act of desire to go beyond physical limits and the need to transcend imposed boundaries. Each figure in both form and material is in a state of transition, from the ordinary to the extraordinary, from the commonplace to the mythical. These pieces are an attempt to comment on the notion of the heroic, the drastic singular act as solution and answer, the role model to be admired and emulated, the isolation of celebrity and the dualities of public personas and secret identities. Shown together I hope these figures reflect on both the power of the myths they aspire to and the fragility of the reality they inhabit.

This series has was created over a span of ten years. The final three figures of the series were completed during a month-long residency in 2007 at Gallery Connexion in Fredericton New Brunswick in cooperation with the New Brunswick College of Craft and Design. When completed the complete collection was exhibited at the Gallery, the College, and downtown Fredericton.
The structure of all the figures are composed of wood carved into their various poses. Each figure starts out the same, in composition, as the others and are transformed or given their powers, by the various surface treatments applied to the figures. These action figures are not representative of any one character but are compilations derived from the comic genre, mythologies, and legend.