“Yes, there is a structure … but it is a structure made of silences, of hanging threads, of cut scenes, where everything occurs in a simultaneous time which is a no-time.”

-Juan Rulfo, 1983

The paintings’ content reflect this ambiguity of form: the figures are both personal and archetypal, representing dramatic relationships that are at once familiar to us through fictional conventions yet at the same time surreal.

The characters drift through the paintings, as does the presence of the artist, as sleepwalkers, allowing elements to materialize, come into relation with one another and then to shift into other forms or states of being.

Canadian artist Erik Volet combines figuration and theatrical space to create imaginative scenes that recall the urban environment, while evoking a sense of spontaneity through the use of vivid colour and abstract forms.

These paintings employ an improvisational mode of painting that blends and confuses the relationship between figure and ground.

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Erik Volet (b. 1980) is a graduate of the Uvic visual arts program whose studies have taken him to Concordia University in Montreal, Europe, the United States & Mexico. He has been an exhibiting artist for over two decades. He has shown work in Canada, and the United States, as well as in France. He produces has large-scale figurative paintings and maintains a constant drawing practice. Other forms he has engaged with are: publication of art books, making of zines, illustration of books, and graffiti. Influences important to his art practice include comic book art, hip hop culture and a continuing fascination with surrealist theory and practice.