The phone is ringing.

With apologies, Dominique Toutant implores, “Can we please stop for 10 minutes?”

It is one day before the opening of a new exhibition at Blouin | Division, the distinguished contemporary art gallery housed on the second floor of an enormous, converted warehouse perched at the edge of the Lachine Canal in St. Henri, and its director’s mobile phone is buzzing.

Like money, art never sleeps. Or, more to the point, art today is money, a perpetual motion machine.

Contemporary art is value, power, currency, desire. Art in its most modern incarnation is omnipresent, simultaneous history and destiny.

Above all, art is a form, a timeless cultural logic, a way of existing in the world, and of manifesting existence.

As a trained artist and art historian, Toutant understands this more than many of his gallerist peers. He recognizes that his function at Blouin | Division is akin to a barometer, measuring the pressure of the surrounding cultural scenes and forecasting their atmospheric movement.

“It’s my job to help the public to find their way into the work,” Toutant tells me. “It’s my job to look around and see what’s up.”

Earlier, amidst the sound of power drills, hammers, and the ubiquitous ringtones, Toutant had given me a tour of the pair of exhibitions being installed just in time for a vernissage the following day — an assemblage of whimsical Papier-mâché sculptures by Serge Murphy, and the photographer Angela Grauerholz’s latest collection of images, entitled Ellipses.

Toutant speaks excitedly about the works and their creators, towing me from room to room, pointing out recurring themes and revealing minute details about each with a keen artist’s eye.

“This one was taken in a restaurant in Mumbai,” he says of one of Grauerholz’s photos.

“That’s steam in the window. Almost all of these portraits are slightly off, slightly uneven, taken at an angle, with a reflection, a lot of fuzziness. She’s really known for that foggy effect.”

Toutant talks with a great deal of affection for the artists under the gallery’s aegis. “To be an art dealer, you need to love the artists you’re going to be with. You need to be excited to listen to them. You need to be, at the same time, an art historian, a coach, a psychiatrist, a friend, their agent. There’s so many aspects to it.”

Coming of age in Quebec City, Toutant always wanted to pursue art as a full-time vocation. “My background was to be an artist, and I was for a long time. I was represented by Joyce Yahouda Gallery,” he recalls. “For a day job, I was also working in the art world. In my 30s, that’s when I got here, and things changed.”

Toutant completed a master’s degree in art history at UQAM, producing a thesis titled “Art History as Material.”

“My project was around the late ‘80s and early ‘90s,” Toutant explains, “The postmodern era, the end of art history, the end of the studio at large. I was very happy in this, and I just loved art. So, to make art was an homage to art. As a gallerist now, I feel like I’m somehow inside of the production of the art with the artist. It’s at that moment that I feel privileged to witness this.”

Toutant defers significantly to his artists to take an active role in the exhibition of their works at Blouin | Division, preferring, as he says, not to “over-curate.”

“Not to say that curators are not important,” he elaborates. “But the artist works on their thing for so long that they pretty much know what they want to do. I know my space, I know my gallery, I know my lights, I know my walls, and I know how people will receive things. So, there’s an exchange with the artist. But as an art dealer, I think it’s important that the voice of the artist comes out most. The art isn’t done until they put it on the wall and put a light on it.”

When choosing which artists to represent within the gallery, Toutant is attentive to how they think of themselves in relation to art history’s overall trajectory.

“If you are interested to be a part of the evolution of an aesthetic,” he notes, “if you are part of that desire to basically put another stone in that story, another brick in that wall, then I’m interested to follow you. For me, I think it’s important for an artist to feel that they are part of a continuum of art history.”

Toutant sees no problem placing a monetary value upon the works of art that he sells. “It’s actually super easy,” he confides, describing the process much like a formula based upon the age of the artist, their costs of production, demand for their oeuvre, the rate of exchange, their potential for distribution, and even the size of the works.

“It’s important to create a price range for every artist,” says Toutant, “But there’s so much art that has been sold in the world that you just compare.”

Still, it’s not merely about slinging art like any other product.

“If I woke up one morning and said I would like to make five artists that I can sell, knowing the market, frankly, I could totally do it,” Toutant scoffs. “But if I do this, I’m cheating. And frankly I think the artists themselves would know pretty quickly that they are being cheated, too. If art history is made because there’s something to sell, well, I’m sorry but this is not art history.”

Toutant believes that Montreal in particular is a singular city well-positioned to lead the avant-garde in an increasingly globalized art market. “People here are just very happy to be touched by talent,” he observes. “It’s that overall acceptance that is Montreal. There is that energy that, yes, art is important. You don’t have to say that to people. They just get it.”

Though, the role of artists in society has changed significantly in the era of digital reproduction, with anyone, anywhere, able to disseminate images through social media, producing novel kinds of networks that exist beyond geographic boundaries and outside of traditional exhibition spaces.

“It’s less the white cube era now,” Toutant admits. “I think it’s moving out of the gallery a bit lately because of Instagram. Suddenly, the context can be a bit absurd.”

Nonetheless, galleries will always be important venues for the discovery and experience of new artforms, and Toutant takes extra care in curating a space with Blouin | Division that is both challenging and enlightening for audiences.

“I strongly believe that art history is my only guidance.”

Just then, his phone rings again.

Toutant rises from the black leather sofa in his back office and motions to me with an index finger.

“I’m sorry, this one I really need to take.”◼︎

Blouin | Division is located at 2020 William Street.

_{Cover image: Dominique Toutant photographed for NicheMTL}