A library, an old farm, a quay, a theater and a metro station: these are the places that hosted the five works in our 2023 public art report. This diversity is a guarantee of the variety (in materials, forms, words, etc.) of the new works in the Montreal space. The five, created following competitions, still share one point: discretion.
You have to walk where no one does, drive through residential streets with little traffic or look up to pass them. Including the most visible work, in front of a building, near the sidewalk. Due to its small size and especially its deceptive appearance, it hardly catches the eye. A fountain ? Come on, let’s continue.
“Colors are to fight winter”, Ludovic Boney
Boots and colors
It is indeed a fountain, with a vertical jet of water high up, which has appeared in front of the new glass facade of the Maisonneuve library, rue Ontario. Its central figure is the one that stands out: a pair of boots. Rain bootssays the title of the work of Clément de Gaulejac, designer active in contemporary art.
For his first public sculpture, he is not stupidly innovating. He does it with his usual critical eye and his caricaturist humor. Funny, public art?
The work simulates a heroic monument with its massive stone base. But of the character, only the feet remain, and that’s it. The only figurative element — the boots, in bronze — overflows with water. Nature ends up, the artist seems to comment, by overcoming the conquering position of humans.
Humor, but black humor, since there is drama — global warming and the increase in floods. Does it take a record week of rain in December for this work, a priori playful and soothing (in times of heatwave, perhaps), to take on meaning? In the cold season, its closed tap nevertheless evokes putting everything on ice. Even the excesses.
HAS Rain boots and its summer appearance, in the east of the island, meets, in the west, a… winter sculpture. Snowy landscapes? Nenni. Very high arch, New sequence, by Ludovic Boney, is distinguished by the liveliness of its complementary colors. So what ? The artist from Quebec does not want her to disappear under a white coat.
“Colors are to fight winter,” he said, during a brief exchange. When I started in public art [en 2006], there were no colors. I started doing it, to distinguish myself and [par contraste] with the snow. »
Despite its height (six meters), New sequence is imperceptible. This is because it is located in a residential area of the Saint-Laurent borough, somewhere between the former Sears head office (today Lufa Farms) and Henri-Bourassa Boulevard.
You have to drive to find the Robert-Bélanger house, a heritage building acquired in 2010 by the City of Montreal and since restored, and behind which the sculpture rests. New sequencewhich takes shape in a series of twisting boards ranging from orange to blue, evokes the transition from the agricultural function of yesteryear to the announced, cultural and educational vocation.
Water and a hand from the Quebec integration program
Hydrospheresby Linda Covit, is the opposite of New sequence : spherical shapes, human scale, gray tints, pierced structures… It is also, however, hidden from view (except by boat): you have to cross a painful corridor between the Grand Quai pavilion and a terraced parking lot for the ‘reach.
Here, at the Port of Montreal, the three elements ofHydrospheres offer a rich visual program. Nice surprise upon arrival on the platform: shadow play, panoramic view, various effects (with mist, summer) and a two-way experience inside the spheres. The immersive structures are not shelters, rather observation points towards the sky, the river and the entire surrounding landscape, including the monumental work Their effigiesby Yann Pocreau (2019).
From Jarry Park to Nuns’ Island, Linda Covit is present throughout Montreal. Hydrospheres is not the first round work with which she evokes water (Haven, 2014, MUHC), but this time these drops of water are intrinsically linked to the site. Do they come from the sky or from the Saint Lawrence?
When the puppet is the theater, everything becomes…, by Guillaume La Brie, offers a completely different spectacle from the air. The sculpture, which reproduces a puppeteer’s hand, can stand on top of a building (the L’Illusion theater), it can also go incognito. From the nearby sidewalks, Saint-Denis and Beaubien streets, only heads that turn to the sky will discover it. And even.
This is a success of integration: the illusion, the name of the puppet theater located at this address, takes shape in the gesture of the sculpted hand. The precision of the skill that pulls the strings gives the impression of directing the activities that take place below. Mirror work, in reflective steel, When the puppet is the theater, everything becomes… speaks of dreams, magic and the fascination that art can arouse.
More discreet himself for some time, Guillaume La Brie has produced around fifteen public works. His pop and poetic art finds here, in the heart of the island, one of its best showcases.
The STM welcomes the history of a neighborhood
The only interior intervention and only mural in the cases cited here, I’m coming back homeby Simon Bilodeau, was left to be desired. The noisy secret construction site at the top of the escalator at the Mont-Royal metro station? It was she who was taking shape.
The work spans three walls, which helps establish it as a narrative thread. You have to take the metro regularly, and preferably take its two entrances, to be able to appreciate the whole story. Abstract lines, such as topographic or underground views of the neighborhood, on the one hand. Brief bestiary and herbarium of Mount Royal, on the other hand. Nods to the architecture on the third side.
At the limits of abstraction or visibility and in black and white tones, I’m coming back home bears the signature of its author. Also more discreet after a very busy decade (fifteen individual exhibitions between 2008 and 2019), Simon Bilodeau reappeared with this mural at the beginning of 2023. We happily find his arrangement between what was (ruins, fragments) and what is fabulous.