Essential in the art market, companies do not only collect. They also exhibit. Three of these collections have recently found new showcases. Like an urban tour, in the form of a museum or around a coffee, the modes of exploration vary. First text of three.
A popular example of postmodern architecture today, the Maison-Alcan — or “Maison-Alcan Complex” — is a patchwork of shapes, colours and uses. The art collection that has been dispersed on the ground floor fits perfectly into the heterogeneous ensemble where heritage, business sector and… coffee breaks intermingle.
Born in the 1980s after the redevelopment of five buildings on Sherbrooke Street West from the end of the 19th centurye and the beginning of the 20th centurye century, Maison-Alcan was acquired in 2015 by Guy Laliberté, not without raising concerns. The former boss of Cirque du Soleil made it the headquarters of Lune Rouge, an investment firm he founded at the time. The complex also houses companies active in sectors such as “creativity” and technologies.
Classified as a heritage site by Québec in 2017, Maison-Alcan can be visited freely at street level. Café Améa, opened in 2022, even encourages you to hang out there. The works are not in the food court, but you can discover them no matter where you enter the complex. It is the collection of Guy Laliberté, incidentally of Lune Rouge, that is in the spotlight there. If there are only a dozen pieces out of the hundreds of the company, it is because others are placed on the floors, not accessible to the public.
“The idea,” says Sylvie François, director of the collection, “was not only to invest in public spaces, but also in offices. [Il faut] to bring the works to life among colleagues and make them better appreciated.”
In the Atrium, the central interior courtyard, there is no trace of the collection. The place is already loaded, especially since the illustrator Ola Volo has been invited to work on the walls and floors. This type of art, piloted by the LNDMRK organization, founder of the Mural festival, has taken place even in the toilets and in the underground parking lot.
“These works are not part of the collection,” says Sylvie François. “They are based on the idea of the encounter between the street and art. For Guy Laliberté, a street performer at heart, this point has always been important.”
In this context, it became difficult to integrate the collection. Sylvie François’s hanging nevertheless has its formal or thematic coherence. The colors of a kinetic sculpture by Marcel Dzama respond, for example, to the series Blue, white, red by Serge Lemoyne. A set of eight silkscreen prints by Janice Kerbel, where letters form a megaphone, echoes the Atrium and its high ceilings. “The place hosts conferences. [Kerbel propose] something about sound, about range. I make up stories that make sense,” explains Sylvie François, amused.
Three entrances
The visit varies depending on the entrance you go through, between the one on Sherbrooke Street and one of the two on Stanley Street. The best option is the most discreet (the door at 2100 Stanley Street); it leads to the Children of the world (1996), by Pierre Granche. This suspended aluminum sculpture, the only survivor of the Alcan collection, is the perfect link between two eras.
“There were other works that belonged to Alcan, but they didn’t fit the contemporary art profile of the collection. It wasn’t worth acquiring them,” comments Sylvie François, remaining vague about the fate of a soapstone sculpture by Abraham Anghik Ruben, an artist from the Northwest Territories. The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts received it, according to its 2017 annual report, as a “gift from Lune Rouge with the kind assistance of Rio Tinto Alcan.”
Lune Rouge’s renovation of Maison-Alcan provided the opportunity to restore Children of the worlddamaged and stained with “repulsive dirt,” according to Sylvie François. After its presence in the Granche retrospective held at the Galerie de l’Université de Montréal in the summer of 2023, this humanist and universal work has found its definitive place in the city center, completing today’s exhibition.
Lune Rouge has, according to this overview in twelve examples, old works (made before the year 2000) and more or less recent ones (between 2012 and 2018). Of the former, the lobby on the Sherbrooke Street side offers an aluminum relief by Jordi Bonet and a photograph by Lynne Cohen. The welcome by the corporate entrance, on Stanley Street, is done with Serge Lemoyne and his winks to the Montreal Canadiens. “I rally people to the cause of the arts, that’s my role,” emphasizes Sylvie François, in front of the four Lemoynes, evoking her “colleague president of the real estate group [Sean O’Donnell]hockey enthusiast”.
From the second lot, the photograph Looking for the day after (2012) by Patrick Bernatchez, clearly visible in front of an elevator, stands out for its large dimensions and its refined composition (a helmeted rider on his horse, in a snowy landscape with no horizon).
“It confronts, we don’t know where we are,” says the representative of Lune Rouge. “When we get out of the elevator, we can be disoriented and at the same time the work points us in a direction.” The collection, which can also be playful like Marcel Dzama’s carousel, is like its window display: varied and colorful.
Works formerly at Cirque du Soleil were transferred to Lune Rouge, following in the footsteps of Guy Laliberté. And those of the director of the collection, who held the same position in the circus company. Pieces were added afterward. There, as before, art accumulates according to the wishes of its founder, without a predetermined annual budget. Sylvie François assures, however, that the growth of the collection is currently being questioned.