In Lyne Lapointe’s workshop | The resilient

After an exhibition at her New York gallery owner Jack Shainman and the screening at the International Art Film Festival of a documentary dedicated to her and which will be released in the fall, Lyne Lapointe is part, until November, of ‘an exhibition during the 60^e Venice Biennale. Resilient, the 66-year-old feminist artist continues her journey with passion. We met her in her workshop in Mansonville, in Estrie.

Mansonville

In 1996, Lyne Lapointe and her friend (the painter) Pierre Dorion were seriously injured by a brick wall that broke away from the Montreal building that housed her studio. A few weeks later, following the advice of her doctor, she left with her partner Nancy Marcotte to rest in the countryside. Loving Estrie, the couple ended up acquiring a property in Mansonville in 2000. Fifteen acres of land on the edge of a hill. A frog pond, a small lake, a vegetable garden, a pine forest. And a workshop in a large rustic house studded with his works.

The workshop is a veritable cabinet of curiosities. We discover her recent works, objects that she collects and uses for her creations and dozens of prints of engravings on glass or wood. We immediately recognize her recurring and sensitive treatment of the female body which she combines with her interests in nature and history.

Here, a painting on which the figurine of a Russian astronaut is attached was created on a hemp mosquito net that she brought from Japan. This is Ukrainian linen. Works for which she makes the wooden frames herself. When we passed by, she was pasting cultured pearls on paper to evoke a woman’s clothing. A seated job, adapted to his current state of health, his legs hurting since the accident in 1996.

Resilience

Lyne Lapointe grew up in Hochelaga in a “rock’n’roll” family. His father, a manic depressive, ended his life. “It was quite painful when I was young,” she says. She then experienced many difficulties (the accident in 1996, cancer then complications), which she overcame with combativeness. His friendships, his loves, his encounters were his nourishing strength.

Her youth had already made her a determined and curious woman. And an artist. Because her father, imaginative and resourceful, and her mother, skilled with her hands, awakened in her the desire to create and an attraction to materials. At 12, she carved panels, painted them in oil and set them on fire to see the effect! In seventh grade, she had Monique Hurtubise as a teacher. Jacques Hurtubise’s wife recognized the artist in her and advised him to study at the University of Ottawa where he taught. Lyne Lapointe therefore left Montreal for Ottawa at the age of 18, against the advice of her parents. “A question of survival,” she said.

Loving sculpting with heterogeneous materials, she shocked Jacques Hurtubise with a creation of paper and horsehair. “The effect was so special that he said: “Tab… what’s the matter? It’s scary!” » Influenced by architect Gordon Matta-Clark, she also became interested in abandoned buildings. The artist Betty Goodwin noticed her in 1977 and allowed her to exhibit in 1981 at her gallery owner, France Morin. Then begins a frenzy of creations…

Unclassifiable

With her signature imbued with feminism, sapphic love and her interests in knowledge and nature, Lyne Lapointe has always had an original reading of art. From 1981, she formed a unique duo of lesbian visual artists with Toronto art critic Martha Fleming for 15 years.

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Their rejection of the traditional art market led them to successively create three installations in abandoned buildings in Montreal. In 1983, in a former fire station on rue Saint-Dominique. In 1984, their exhibition Science Museum is held in the current building of the 1700 art center, La Poste. And in 1987, The Donna Delinquentaan exhibition on marginalized women, was organized in the former Corona Theater, then dilapidated, thanks to the intervention of La Poune’s granddaughter, Kathleen Verdon.

These exhibitions, which helped to save buildings in danger, combined painting and sculpture. They were successful and allowed the tandem to become known in the United States. This led him, in 1990, after exhibiting at the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York, to create an exhibition at the Battery Maritime Building in New York, particularly on the arrival of black slaves in the 18th century.^e century. An exhibition that local black communities loved.

The exhibitions will follow one another, at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Montreal (1992), then at the 22^e São Paulo Biennale, in 1994. After his separation from Martha Fleming, a retrospective of the duo’s work was presented at the MAC in 1998 (Studiolo), then Lyne Lapointe presents The blind spot at the same place in 2002, before a museum exhibition in France in 2004. Since then, she has exhibited regularly at the Bellemare-Lambert gallery, in Montreal, and at her New York gallery owner.

Visit the artist’s page on the Jack Shainman gallery website

News

Last winter, Lyne Lapointe exhibited in New York. Echoes of Circumstance presented his work, that of Ghanaian sculptor El Anatsui and that of Hawaiian artist Garnet Puett. An American curator, Destinee Ross-Sutton, then bought his work Madre del Mar. Chosen to curate an exhibition of 33 women artists from around the world who address female sexuality, M^me Ross-Sutton has included the work in this exhibition presented at the European Cultural Center at Palazzo Bembo, in Venice, until November 24.

Quite an honor for Lyne Lapointe!

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The only Canadian artist in the group, she rubs shoulders with big names like Zanela Muholi, Renee Cox and Vanessa German.

It’s cool. People feel in my work what the woman represents. The woman is strong. But we are not out of the woods! If I kiss Nancy in a store, it might still go hiiiiii! As a lesbian and a woman, we have a different perception of the world and we continue to be marginalized and feel threatened.

Lyne Lapointe

In the documentary Art and material that Germán Gutiérrez and Carmen Garcia dedicated to her, praise from the art world for Lyne Lapointe is pouring in. According to Glenn D. Lowry, director of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, “she does extraordinary and remarkable work.” Her gallery owner, Jack Shainman, believes that she is “one of the great artists of our time”. However, she never received a major award. “She is a free artist who does not compromise,” says Richard Gagnier, head of restoration at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. “Being a rebel is a position and also a destiny,” adds Diana Nemiroff, former curator at the National Gallery of Canada.

Consult the artist’s page on the Bellemare-Lambert galleries website

In images, in pictures

Here are some works by Lyne Lapointe over the years.

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