The visual artist from Saguenay Jean-Jules Soucy is no more. The one who created the Pyramid of Ha! Ha! in La Baie, died last week after a long illness, at the age of 71.
“I saw him a month before he left when I was in Saguenay. He was still in good shape, happy, he had all his head and we had very good discussions that day, like every time I went to see him, ”recounts in an interview the artist and independent curator Emmanuel Galland, who was one of his close friends.
If he did not have the opportunity to visit him in the hospital in his last days of life, Emmanuel Galland was able to talk at length and several times on the phone with Jean-Jules Soucy.
“He called people one by one, close and less close, he knew he was living his last moments”, continues Mr. Galland, specifying that the artist had suffered from health problems for several years which made him particularly sedentary.
Graduated in 1976 from the University of Quebec in Chicoutimi with a bachelor’s degree in plastic arts education, Jean-Jules Soucy taught for a few years at his university before devoting himself entirely to his art, which mixes “unconventional sculptures and voluminous installations “.
Art for all
Among his works, the most popular is certainly The Pyramid of Ha! Ha!, a monument commemorating the 1996 Saguenay Flood, erected in the following years in the La Baie borough. Standing 21 meters high, the pyramid was made from approximately 3,000 “Give Way” traffic signs to which light-reflecting film was added.
“It’s a piece of bravery, this pyramid, underlines Mr. Galland, recalling that it measures the same size as the pyramid of the Louvre in Paris. In my opinion, this is his greatest achievement, his greatest legacy to Quebec and to the citizens of the region. »
It also evokes the work stressed carpet, exhibited at the MAC in 2003. For this work, he had asked the help of citizens of Saguenay and everywhere else in Quebec to collect some 60,000 quarts of milk cartons, which he then washed and assembled.
“Participatory art was super important to him, even before it was a trend. It was his way of making art more accessible to everyone”, explains Mr. Galland, describing the artist as someone “very welcoming”, “very curious” and endowed with “great humility”.
A big fan of crossword puzzles, he also had a great sense of humor and loved puns, which he used extensively to name his works. It was a way for him to approach rather serious themes while hitting the public more easily.
For some time now, with the complicity of Jean-Jules Soucy himself, Emmanuel Galland has been working to document his artistic career. He plans to put together a retrospective book as well as a podcast bringing together their long conversations recorded last fall.