Montreal, January 6, 2003- The gallery Pierre-François Ouellette art contemporain is pleased to announce a new installation and works on paper by Rose-Marie Ekemberg Goulet to be presented from January 18 to March 1, 2003.
Once again, continuing her parallel explorations of the asides, byways and processes of her monumental works, the artist opens up her private archives of public projects to show some possible tangential driftings. In her previous exhibition — S'(expose), a “work in progress” —, the artist “in residence” had arranged/installed her maquettes throughout a deliriously structured architecture of showcases. On-site visitors were guided through successive metamorphoses of archival work, searching for a hidden word.
This series, at Pierre-François Ouellette Art Contemporain, concentrates on various aspects of writing, drawing, and photographic or digital images connected to a more specific public project. In a first, experimental hall, recycled materials provide the substance for a “word riddle” installation in which visitors are invited to traverse and manipulate the archives. Another word is hidden behind more words that are connected to other materials, other puns. The same word echoes in the second hall, reserves it, through a series of works on paper. These object-works (as opposed to the process-work in the first hall) are digital photo-triptychs, also derived from archives, but presented in glass cases, in the more traditional and conservational spirit of an exhibition collection.
The constructivist making of this exhibition, like that of the last one, juxtaposes the private gallery's intimate space with the complex development of a public project. Again, it greets the spectator with an invitation to look and consult on many levels, without the artist's help this time, but the gallery owner's.
Originating from installation, Goulet's work has gradually shifted toward temporary and permanent public art. She has produced over fifteen works throughout Quebec since the early 1980s. She combines experimentations with materials and technique with the social and semiotic interpretation of spaces. At the beginning of the 1990s, with Paysage culturel, at the Cent jours d'art contemporain, she presented an installation based on the deconstruction of texts and images. The letters she fashions here later become her preferred material. Her most eloquent public art projects include:
Passage protégé, droit de passage, 2000, D'un millénaire à l'autre, City of Montreal.
Nef pour quatorze reines, 1999, a memorial marking the 10th anniversary of the tragedy at the École Polytechnique, given Regional Honour and Citation awards at the Canadian Society of Landscape Architects' Professional Awards, 2001.
Monument pour A, 1996, Centre des congrès de Québec.
Plans, 1994, École des métiers et des occupations de l'industrie de la construction, Quebec.
Monument pour L, 1993, Parc Fort Roland, Ville de Lachine.
L'énigme de la générale, 1987, Dawson College, Westmount.
One can also find some of her work in the Canada Council Art Bank, the Musée du Québec's Prêts d'œuvres d'art collection, the National Library of Canada and Bibliotèque nationale du Québec, as well as in private collections in Quebec and in Europe.