Montreal Museum of Fine Arts | New Laurentian Flora blooms at the feet of Riopelle

To the tune of the chords and melodies of electronic instruments, the public of the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (MMFA) was able to witness the creative process of Flore Laurentienne during its week-long residency which ends this Saturday, a first in the history of the institution.

Surrounded by around fifteen carefully selected works by Jean Paul Riopelle, the artist installed at the Claire and Marc Bourgie pavilion, for five consecutive days, a studio made up of an impressive number of Moog brand instruments. The structure included analog synthesizers, a transistor organ and an electromechanical piano. If most of the devices are an integral part of Mathieu David Gagnon’s personal collection, the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (MMFA) was able to add to the lot a very rare piece kept at Laval University.

“These are machines that were invented in the same years as Riopelle’s creations,” explains the composer in reference to the series of lithographs, Leaves (1967), which hangs on the rails of his “studio”.

La découverte de cette série, qui est passée davantage sous silence dans la production de Riopelle, a été une révélation pour Mathieu David Gagnon, qui crée par accumulation de couches de sons, ce qui n’est pas sans rappeler la technique de l’estampe.

Like the renowned painter, the musician is also driven by the element of openness and chance that creation involves and which, in his case, can be provided by analog synthesizers. “My life changed the day I bought a Minimoog, an old one. When [les instruments] don’t quite do what they’re supposed to do, it results in things we wouldn’t have thought of. »

“This is why there are so many instruments here: [ceux-ci] inspire me a lot,” reveals the musician who always analyzes in depth a physical section of a particular synthesizer before moving on to another. His approach also justifies the fact that no digital device is part of the creative space.

When music enters the museum

Accompanied by musician Antoine Létourneau-Berger, Mathieu David Gagnon performed for eight hours a day in his “studio” during this residency. “I wanted to recall the first minimalism concerts. [Les musiciens] played full nights. […] People were coming in, going out, sleeping. It was a thing in the 1960s.”

According to the artist, the idea for making electronic music at the museum came from the Moog synthesizer concert that took place at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in 1969 as part of the series Jazz in the Garden.

Let us emphasize that if music has gradually carved out a place for itself in museum institutions since this New York event, the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts has been able to assert itself as one of the leaders in the field thanks to the exhibitions Warhol Live (2008) or, more recently, Full Volume: Basquiat and Music (2022).

According to the Director General of the MMFA, Stéphane Aquin, “museums sanitize art history [lorsqu’il] There are just tables. Art is often created in a pool of ideas, which flow from one form to another. It happens in the workshop, sometimes with music, in collaboration.” He points out that the MMFA “restores the texture to this art history,” which can make for a fascinating reading of the works.

In the case of the Flore Laurentienne project, however, it is a question of developing this relationship between music and museum in even greater depth. “It’s a real creative residence,” continues Stéphane Aquin.

Beyond nature and abstraction

The idea of ​​a residency germinated when Flore Laurentienne wrote the original music for the podcast Portraying Riopelle, broadcast on Radio-Canada’s OHdio platform. “I surprised myself by being so inspired by Riopelle and by painting,” confides the composer.

The ties that unite the two artists are far from limited to a common interest in the landscapes surrounding the St. Lawrence River from the heights of Kamouraska. Flore Laurentienne transcends the commonplaces of a reading of Riopelle focused on nature and geese or even on abstraction and relationships to automatism. It’s a new look off the beaten track that is being taken. The project creates a rapprochement between electronic music and the visual arts of the 1950s and 1960s and questions the spirit of the era in a different way.

Is this music residency the start of a new series at the MMFA? It seems that the project is rather unique in the eyes of its general director, who wants to wait until another strong proposal presents itself. “It is the artists who lead us,” he concludes.

Who is Flore Laurentienne

• Mathieu David Gagnon is a graduate of the music faculty of the University of Montreal. He trained at the Aubervilliers Conservatory and the Bordeaux Conservatory.
• He unveils his project under the name Flore Laurentienne with the album Volume I.
• In 2020, he won two awards at ADISQ and was shortlisted for the Polaris Music Prize for best Canadian album of the year. In 2021, it was a finalist in the Instrumental Album of the Year category at the Juno Awards. In 2022, he launches the album Volume II.