Nicolas Grenier: Flags takes the nation-state's supreme icon and reverses its logic. Where traditional flags deploy simple graphics to produce clear, exclusive identity, Grenier's abstractions dissolve geometric forms into brushed chromatic fields of delicate, improbable color — images that seem to float, ready to disappear the moment the eye loses focus. Made by a Canadian artist exhibiting in the United States amid deepening political divisions, the paintings propose anti-flags: identity symbols suggesting mixing, inclusion, and change, representing a world better felt intuitively than declared.
