In Trashformations, Jérôme Fortin presents for the first time in Montreal three Seascapes of large format which were installed in February 2005 at ARCO (Madrid). The Marines (Seascapes) series was developed in the northeastern part of Quebec (Saint-Jean-port-Joli) during the artist's residency in 2001.
"Every day, I walked along the shoreline from the northeast to the town. I patiently gathered all the plastic bottles that the peak spring tides dumped onto the riverbank. The St. Lawrence River displayed an amazing presence. Some of my clearest insights came from watching the shifting waves and tides. At the Centre, I spent my evenings cutting up the multi-coloured containers into long, thin strips. I stapled these plastic strips directly onto the walls of my workshop to make Tondos, a form that brings to mind portholes or the sea seen through a spyglass.. The plastic strips were densely lined up in layers to suggest a wave motion. The bottlenecks that appear here and there show the number of bottles that went into each seascape. Each work has its own plastic qualities, depending on the different textures, forms and colours of the bottles. For instance, certain transparencies produce an effect like the reflection of light on water."
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 is work as part of the current group show: Envers des apparences.
Michel de Broin
In the exhibition "Trashformations", Pierre-François Ouellette art contemporain is presenting a selection of works by Michel de Broin shown for the first time in Montréal.
"The Blue Monochrome Studies" (2003) refer to work "Blue Monochrome" recently acquired by the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec. In this sculpture, a garbage dumpster is used to frame its contents - 1649 litres of filtered, chlorinated water. Its interior is lined with waterproof blue material while a pump and filter system ensures the purity of its contents. Lastly, powerful jets stimulate the sensorial experience.
"Réparations" is an action that was staged in the suburban of Paris and then in the center. In Réparations, used water bottles are filled with compressed air and liquid, then projected like rockets a 100 feet in the air. During a stroll, bottles haphazardly discarded in the street find themselves, one after another, blown into the Paris sky.
Born in 1970, Michel de Broin lives and works in Montreal, and he obtained his master's degree in visual arts from Université du Québec à Montréal in 1997. His most recent exhibitions solos have been at Galerie Pierre-François Ouellette, Montreal (2005); La Vitrine, Paris (2003); Galerie 44, Toronto (two-person show with Ève K. Tremblay, 2003); Villa Merkel, Esslingen, Germany (2002) and the Centre des arts actuels Skol, Montréal (1999). De Broin has also been part of many group exhibitions in Canada and Europe, including Damage Control (2003) at the Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography, Ottawa; Vaguement Radical Vaguely (2003) at the National Gallery, Sofia, Bulgaria; La demeure (2002) at Galerie Optica, Montreal; and Artefact (2001) on the Lachine Canal in Montreal. The artist's public art piece Révolutions was dedicated in 2003 in Montreal's Parc Maisonneuve-Cartier. De Broin was the recipient of the Prix Pierre Ayot 2002.
Karilee Fuglem
In 1997 I made Fluff, a set of photographs enlarged just beyond what the size of the negative could really accommodate, so that the images -- three dust bunnies and a cloud -- are difficult to "read." The fluffy bits, made fuzzier with the photographic process, look like alien life forms, or insects, or scars on skin. More Fluff (Particular) again celebrates the humble dust bunny, but in colour, using digital photography with its ready-made particle-dispersion of pixels instead of "grain." Photographed with a modest digital camera, these ubiquitous, barely noticeable clusters of domestic bits are enlarged well beyond any "recommended" resolution, giving them them a bigger, bolder presence than they normally get drifting about under the bed. The inkjet process further disperses the particles that compose the images so that they defy microscopic scrutiny. coaxing our affection even if we don't know everything about them."
Originally from Southern BC, Karilee Fuglem has made her home in Montreal since moving here to pursue an MFA at Concordia University in 1989. She has had numerous exhibitions in Canada during the last 10 years, most recently in the exhibition Advancing in the fog at the Musée national des beaux-arts de Québec. And in "Sense", a group exhibition at the Edmonton Art Gallery . Oakville Galleries organized a solo show of her works in 2003. At the 2nd Manif d'art in Quebec in 2003 she presented "cumulous" , a cloud of thousands of breath-inflated plastic bags suspended at head height so the visitor can walk through them. It was first shown at the Southern Alberta Art Gallery in 2000 and again at the Dunlop Gallery in Regina in 2001. Her "breathing wall" was shown at CIAC's first Montreal Biennial in 1998 and her work was part of Of Fire and Passion at the Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal in 1997. Fluff (1997) is in the collection of the Musée d'art contemporain de Montreal and was recently shown in the foyer of the Museum.
Louis Joncas
The Detritus series is an ongoing investigation of Joncas's material existence, informed by still-life painting and vanitas. The series depicts the detritus of domestic life and everyday survival. It questions rituals and banal chores - such as cleaning, eating, grooming, and consuming - that leave behind an endless trail of detritus. The objects photographed and recontextualized document social aspects of the everyday and over-consumption. They tell a kind of personal and social history of the actions and rituals performed on a daily basis in a world of consumption.
"My photographs always seem to address vanitas. With historical references to painting, my works are self-concious reflections on the vanitas genre. Informed by past traditions, I contemporise themes that were addressed then, death, time, and the fleeting nature of the worlds goods and sensual pleasures. The detritus series is a in an ongoing investigation of my material existence, involving the still-life. The series depicts the ³detritus of domestic life², questioning the everyday rituals and banal chores such as cleaning, eating, consuming and grooming which leave behind an endless trail of detritus."
Born in Winnipeg in 1959, Louis Joncas lives and works in Montreal. CV ciel variable published an important portfolio of his work in its issue 64 (June 2004). His works can be found at the Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography, the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, the National Gallery of Canada, the Ottawa Art Gallery and the New Orleans Museum of Art.
ARTICLES
Crevier, Lyne. Ici, Triage à sec, July 14 - July 20, 2005, p44
Redfern, Christine. The Mirror, Heaps of steaming art, June 9 - June 15, 2005, p33
Delgado, Jérôme. La Presse, Du recyclage en quelque sorte, July 3, 2005, p6
