Duran Contemporain is pleased to present Towards Silence, a solo exhibition of new paintings by Michelle Paterok, on view from February 26 through March 21. 

In this new body of work, Paterok continues her sustained investigation into perception, atmosphere, and the emotional registers of home interiors. Her paintings do not depict specific sites as much as they evoke the felt experience of being within them. Twilight atmospheres, softened shapes, and suspended moments of stillness emerge through layered surfaces and subtle chromatic shifts. Light functions not as spectacle, but as a quiet structural presence, shaping space while dissolving clear boundaries between foreground and distance.

Towards Silence marks a refined direction in Paterok’s practice. The works demonstrate a heightened attention to surface and material, with pigment applied in restrained yet deliberate gestures that privilege nuance over immediacy. The compositions resist narrative closure, instead inviting a slower mode of looking. Silence here is not absence, but concentration: a space in which perception becomes heightened and time appears momentarily suspended.

Based in Montréal, Michelle Paterok has developed a painting practice grounded in observation and introspection. Her work examines how memory and environment intersect, and how the act of painting can translate ephemeral experiences into sustained visual form. With Towards Silence, Paterok offers a meditative exhibition that foregrounds quiet intensity and the discipline of attention.