He arrived at art carried by the rebellious spirit of the counter-culture of the 1960s; through the fault of an older brother and the linguistic explorations of Claude Gauvreau and Raôul Duguay. Since then, using ink pads, metallic threads and performances in the form of expeditions, François Morelli has woven his web of social demands and calls for creative freedom. This great figure of contemporary Quebec art is honored with the 2021 Ozias-Leduc Prize. The award was awarded Tuesday for the tenth time by the Fondation Émile-Nelligan.
A pioneer of multidisciplinarity, Morelli practices drawing on more than one medium and sometimes to monumental dimensions. He also sculpts readily portable objects. His actions led him to cross Montreal, on foot, as well as cities in Europe and the United States.
Born in 1953 in the Center-Sud, where he has had his workshop for thirty years, the man is not only an artist with a thousand ideas. This Concordia University retiree has also made a name for himself as a teacher and, beyond campuses, as a committed citizen.
On his work table rests a photograph where he appears with his feet in the water, in full performance. This is the St. Lawrence, he points out. We see him from the back, toque on his head – his usual look – and tree branches worn like gloves – yet another prosthesis of his own.
The photo, which will be exhibited at Galerie 3 in Quebec in the spring, resonates like a distant echo of one of his first actions, which he had just mentioned in an interview. It was in 1982, in the waters of Lac Saint-Jean. Then a young professor at the University of Quebec at Chicoutimi (UQAC), François Morelli deplored the releases of mercury by the Alcan aluminum smelter, which poisoned fish. He remembers it well: he got his very first prize there.
“Alma’s environment and ecology committee gave me a small trophy. A hunting and fishing columnist covered the event. It was not the art world that spoke of the work, ”he recounts, cheerfully.
The anecdote makes him smile, makes us smile. However, it sums up the importance he gives to pushing art out of its shackles, to working outside of this single environment.
After his brief stint at UQAC, François Morelli lived in New York for ten years and obtained a master’s degree from Rutgers University, the intellectual headquarters of the Fluxus movement. If it was during his studies at Concordia University in the 1970s that he recognized Irene F. Whittome as a model who transgresses the disciplines, it is with New Yorkers Martha Rosler and Leon Golub, among others. , that he found his momentum. “The fight at Golub was to paint and challenge the visual arts from within. I understood that I could cover wide, be interdisciplinary. “
Corrupt the line
With a grant of $ 25,000 – close to $ 5,000 for the Borduas Prize, awarded by Québec – the Ozias-Leduc Prize rewards “the body of work” of a Québec artist. In his speech on Tuesday, the president of the jury and director of the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Stéphane Aquin, underlined the “luminous path” traced by Morelli, whose multidisciplinarity “is a constantly renewed exploration of the relationships between form and meaning ”.
The main stakeholder appreciates the prestigious recognition, but does not see it “as a finality”. What appeals to him about this award is that it does not result from a nomination, unlike the Borduas. “Each member of the jury comes up with a name. People have to argue. The process makes the award even more rewarding. This debate means that [quelqu’un] is chosen. “
Speaking and exchanging are at the heart of his career. If he made drawing his main means of expression, it was because it met several innate needs. “Drawing is a first impulse,” he says. It was the “slippage” from calligraphy to writing that attracted him, this passage from word to image, from representation to gesture, always present in him.
Like performance, drawing is inclusive, and Morelli is quick to quote the musicians, dancers and architects who draw. He likes to corrupt the straight line, like Gauvreau, who “deregulated language”.
The Nelligan Foundation prize ended up in the hands of François Morelli four years after the exhibition which celebrated him at the 1700 La Poste center. The homage of a museum is still long overdue, as for most artists of his generation.
“If you need a family to raise a child, you need a community to create an artist. Without Christiane Chassay, without Joyce Yahouda [ses galeristes dans les années 1990 et 2000], without Isabelle de Mévius [directrice du 1700 La Poste], I’m not here ”, continues the one who affirms that the expo of 2017 made him popular. ” [Avant], when I was walking at the Jean-Talon market, people would not stop me to say to me “Mr. Morelli, we liked your exhibition ”. “