The gallery Pierre-François Ouellette art contemporain is pleased to present the solo exhibition entitled Nouveaux Portraits by Marie-Jeanne Musiol from August 30 to October 4. The artist will be present at the gallery on Saturday September 6 and during Les Journées de la Culture on Saturday, September 27. The artist states: I have been making portraits since 1992. They are studies of figures emerging or disappearing in black space. These "New Portraits" show the subject's now legible face, and some variations thereof - small accompanying photos taken from a sequence of shots, from which I choose one for enlargement in the definitive portrait. Each of the people photographed is an acquaintance who accepted to look at the camera during a very quick session that left little time to pose. The subject is simply there, caught with no fuss.
I see in these images a condensation of the possibilities of the portrait and of photographic material. The pronounced granularity of the photographic dot has some of the consistency of the atom. Like the atom, the dot is ensconced in a continuum with millions of other dots that bind and unbind to form the image. In this ceaseless movement, subject and photograph materialize as one possibility among others. The body clearly appears for what it is: an aggregate. Just as the dots crystallize to form the solid and visible body, they can also loosen to become carriers of immaterial frequencies in a field of energy. The delimitation between the solid body and its energized counterpart is strewn with holes - the spaces one observes between the photographic dots of the portrait.
The artist and the gallery would like to note that another solo exhibition of Marie-Jeanne Musiol's work is still on view in Montréal until October 1. Entitled Silences. Marie-Jeanne Musiol, the exhibition organized by the Musée art urbain is composed of seven large format images that can be seen on three outdoor sites: in the Old Port (in front of the Science Centre), at the Marché Bonsecours (South face of the building) and at the Café Cherrier. The Musée d'art urbain also launched a publication on this work.
Marie-Jeanne Musiol is featured currently and until September in a solo show entitled: "Silences" at the Musée d'art urbain de Montréal. A catalogue accompanies the exhibition/Also note the publication accompanying the exhibition: En Marge Du Silence exhibition. Marie-Jeanne Musiol, which continues until September 1, 2003, the Museum of Urban Art is launching these days a publication which takes stock of the series of works presented in the public square in Montreal by the artist photographer Quebecois Marie-Jeanne Musiol. The exhibition is still visible at the three Museum sites: the Old Port of Montreal (in front of the Science Center), the Bonsecours Market (south facade) and the Café Cherrier (north facade). These sites host seven large format images of the artist.
Marie-Jeanne Musiol's photographs seek to restore the essential character of a reality. This can take the form of a character: this is the case in the photographs exhibited at the Bonsecours Market and at the Café Cherrier, where the characters emerge from the darkness in a pose where nothing comes to distract our gaze from what they are deeply. This reality, of which only the essential is kept, can also take the form of a landscape, as is the case for the works exhibited in the Old Port. The gravity of these images grabs us all the more when we learn that these photographs were taken in the vicinity of a concentration camp in Poland, the artist's country of origin. In these works, nature has become a witness to history and the sufferings that have gone through it.
The new publication of the Museum of Urban Art documents an exhibition which, through its sober and striking character, has added a singular note to the public art landscape in Montreal. Photographs of the sites, throughout the seasons, as well as comments by the artist and an introduction by the curator, France Gascon, allow us to redo the route proposed by the works. The exhibition catalog, designed by Kolégramdesign, was made possible with financial assistance from the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec. The Silences exhibition benefited from the collaboration of the Loto-Québec Collection. The Museum also received support for this exhibition from the Société du Vieux-Port de Montréal, the Marché Bonsecours, the Service de la culture de la Ville de Montréal, Café Cherrier, Michel Dallaire Design, Enseicom and GHQ Quebec.
