Two weeks ago, we told you about Sébastien Cliche’s exhibition — The temperature of informationat the CIRCA Center until April 27 -, an installation which took the pretext of a fiction – a sort of laboratory making strange distillations and metamorphoses of macerated information – in order to create an original work of art, evoking the work of the alchemist.
Marie-Claude Bouthillier — who in 2016, in an exhibition also at CIRCA, was “inspired by the cloister, the structure of the grids which punctuate the spaces as well as the habits of the nuns in order to talk about painting” and the mysteries of creation — presents these days, at Produits Rien, an exhibition which takes as material the notion of astrology and, in a certain way, the idea of alchemy… Astrology reveals itself to be the point starting point for a creation which will rub off on the landscape of these very reasonable, morally acceptable and often self-censored, literally committed and utilitarian works, which have established themselves for several years in contemporary art.
Bouthillier is inspired by André Barbault (1921-2019), tarot reader and psychoanalytic astrologer, friend of the surrealists – including André Breton -, who had a passion for magic, esotericism, occultism, astrology and even… alchemy.
It must be said that, for Bouthillier, “making art, create – she insists on the word – it is transforming a material or an idea in an act which relates to alchemy. Art would therefore be a matter of mysterious transmutation. Bouthillier takes the opportunity to talk about his love for surrealist art, but also for symbolist art. Let us recall how, at the end of the 19th centurye century, this art attempted to restore spirituality to creation in a positivist era – ideology of the industrial age – where everything, even art, had to process and produce concrete things.
The promise of the arts
In a first section of the exhibition, we will find 365 borders, strips of canvas where the calendar of planetary transits of the 365 days between the spring of 2025 and the spring of 2026 is “transcribed”, transits among which we find the conjuncture between Saturn and Neptune. This situation, according to Barbault, would promise an era more radiant than ours, a moment of grace… It would be there that this would partly reside. Promise of the stars which gives its title to the exhibition. In another room, Bouthillier’s paintings show the triple conjunction between Jupiter, Saturn and Pluto in 2020-2021, a time of pandemic when it became necessary to find something to dream about…
But we will be careful not to reduce this exhibition to a simple illustration of astrological stories. This artistic installation is above all an invitation, an exhortation to the interpretation through art of the sometimes obscure world that surrounds us. Then, Bouthillier explains to us how she carries out a sort of appropriation of ancient mythology. “Venus, Mars, Saturn, Pluto… planets or deities, in the history of art and painting in particular, there have been many. » And we know how this mythology was the leaven, the pretext for a reflection on the human being and on his passions, his weaknesses, his aspirations…
But in our time, which pretends to be that of the circulation of information and disinformation, the majority of our contemporaries impoverish art, summarizing it and reducing it to the subjects covered. Bouthillier quotes in this regard the writer and philosopher Aldous Huxley who, in his book The doors of perception (1954), explained how the art of portraiture was often a pretext for the artist to create forms, including drapery, embodying his temperament and artistic vision…
Then, Bouthillier adds, mischievously and judiciously, that “political speeches are often as ridiculous as prophetic speeches”… She is not wrong. Prophets or seers have not disappeared with modern times, but they have legitimized their practices by sprinkling their speeches with scientific terms. Economic forecasters – also present in our governments – launch into predictions that are more wishful thinking and political catechism than in-depth analysis. The economic god, with his economic high priests, has replaced — since the French Revolution? — the God of religions punishing moral sins. Hell has been dethroned by the threat of debt which will one day make us pay for past excesses… We listen attentively to all these political “experts”, those who had affirmed that the election of Trump was impossible, that Putin would not attack Ukraine and that this war would not last… And what about these epidemiologists who assured us that COVID would not spread?
But then, you will tell me, to which saint should we devote ourselves?
Room for art? “Make room for magic!” Make way for objective mysteries! » would add Borduas… Bouthillier is in good company, under skies that we expect to be kind to him. Was she born under a lucky star?