The gallery is very happy to announce that Pierre-François Ouellette art contemporain has been invited to participate in the Free Style programme of Art Forum Berlin 2005. We will be exhibiting works by Michel de Broin, Alexandre Castonguay, and Jérôme Fortin who will have shown this year at the Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal. The gallery is happy to return for a second time in this prestigious forum for contemporary art in Europe and to continue developing its relationships within the strong community present at the fair.
Art Forum Berlin, the international trade fair for contemporary art, will take place at the Berlin Exhibition Grounds from 29 September to 03 October 2005. Organized by Messe Berlin GmbH in cooperation with an international art gallery advisory board, Art forum Berlin is one of the most innovative, world-class art shows. With 100 galleries from 25 countries, Art forum Berlin showcases the works of established artists and newcomers. The spacious, historically protected exhibition halls 18-20 offer ideal conditions for exclusive art presentations from galleries selected by an international jury. With its compact, clearly targeted approach, Art Forum Berlin provides a unique venue offering information and dialogue for contemporary art dealers and agents. Each year, Art Forum Berlin attracts exhibitors and visitors from around the world to Germany's capital city. The event features all forms of 21st century art ranging from video and photography, to paintings, sculptures, installations, graphics, and multimedia. Nearly 30,000 art enthusiasts, 1,900 journalists from 22 nations, and renowned collectors, museum directors and curators from Germany and other countries visited Art Forum Berlin in 2004.
Michel de Broin
At Art Forum Berlin, Michel de Broin intends to present work from the series "Stick to Resist". The robot "Stick to Resist" consists of a high capacity (300-kilo) electromagnet that can be installed on metal surfaces in public spaces, like the Eifel Tower. The robot can be activated or deactivated with an electronic signature provided by the user. Otherwise it will refuse to be removed from its solid attachment. When activated, a countdown shows the battery-life, suggestive of a time bomb; far from being the case, when the countdown ends, the electromagnet falls to the ground. Stick to Resist is a functional robot, working with a battery, a memory, and a relative level of autonomy. The electromagnet is an electrical resistor, by resisting, the device makes its presence felt and stands solidly by its own.
Although de Broin is in his early thirties, his artistic career is already an impressive and highly coherent one. His many residencies in Europe and his participation in important exhibitions — most notably in France (Made in France at la Vitrine, Paris and Superficielle at FRAC Alsace, 2004; Germany (Épater la galerie, Villa Merkel and Bahnwaterhaus, Essenglin, 2002), Switzerland (Kunsthaus Basselland, 2001) and the United States (Au courant, Center for Curatorial Studies, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York, 2001) — have earned him recognition abroad. He is the recipient of the Krasner-Pollock Foundation Prize (1999) and Prix Pierre-Ayot (2002). A major article on his work to date was published this year in Parachute no. 115 under the theme of "resistance". Through his work and his determination, de Broin has shown true talent for borrowing concepts from fields as diverse as philosophy, hydraulic engineering, and art history, and really putting them to work in perceptual arrangements. De Broin takes it upon himself to disrupt what counts as authority, establishing relationships between material forms and social codes. His strategy consists in giving meaning to what lacks it by taking it from authoritative sources. It is his way of creating original connections, where the meaning disrupted by the combinatory junctions is put back into play in a special way each time.
Currently, Michel de Broin who was featured in our first presentation at Artforum is in residence in Berlin at the Bethanien Foundation. He will have a solo at the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec in the Summer of 2006.
Alexandre Castonguay
Our presentation will feature Alexandre Castonguay's (in collaboration with Mathieu Bouchard) latest interactive work integrating tactile screen technology titled Digitale, 2003-04. Digitale is an upholstered bench with integrated touch screen and modified Kodak Brownie box camera, video projection and a computer. In Digitale, the digital and analog modes of representation are put into play. Expectations of spectacle, responsiveness and quick gratification of the former are thwarted by the slow, deliberate development of the latter. The viewer's touch embodies the image while pressing a shutter initiates a distantiation from our representation. The design, reminiscent of modernist utopias of access and equality, determines the behavior and experience of the viewer.
Jérôme Fortin
Jérôme Fortin will present works from his newest series Screens that he is created for the group show L'envers des apparences at the Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal this Summer. These large installations are created with simple sheets of printed paper taken from comic books that he cuts end-to-end and glues onto the wall. He creates variations on motifs which, by it patterns and sheer size, recall movie screens and monitors, where the basic unit pixels are revealed in a estranged way. These works continue his formal exploration that he examined in Tondos which will also be featured. Tondos is a series of prints created in relation to the Seascapes which he presented in 2003 at ArtForum Berlin.
Jérôme Fortin, recipient of the 2004 prix Pierre-Ayot, has had work shown in several group exhibitions in Quebec and abroad, such as the Biennale de Montréal in 1998, Galerie UQAM in 2000, and the Officina America in Bologna in 2002. For a residency in New York, he produced work that was to be presented as part of the exhibition Growth and Risk - Québec New York 2001, but that was tragically interrupted by the events of September 11. The New York Times published on 11 September 2001 a major article on his process of creation: Plumbing a City's Curiosities in the Name of Art by Randy Kennedy. His first solo show within the institutional framework of a museum, Ici et là, was presented in 2002 at the Musée d'art de Joliette and is currently touring in Canada. It will be presented in Tokyo in 2006. His work can be found in the collections of the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, the Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal, the Musée d'art de Joliette and several private collections. The Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal is presenting his work as part of the current group show: Envers des apparences.
Marie-Jeanne Musiol's electromagnetic photographs and installation is currently in view at ZKM in Karlshure as part of the Corps magnetique show also featuring works by Nam June Paik and Gary Hill.
Marie-Josée Laframboise is preparing her solo show at the Musée d'art moderne et contemporain de Nice in May 2006.
Jérôme Fortin will be presenting solo shows in Tokyo and Washington next year.
