Programming

SPECIAL

23 September — 21 October 2000

Christine Brault, Marie-Suzanne Désilets, Jean-François Prost, Marie-Andrée Rho, Philippe Tessier

Nulle part / Ailleurs

Research outside the walls and gallery exhibition of five members of DARE-DARE and photographic presentation of four projects outside the walls, by Guy L'Heureux.

Photo : Guy L'Heureux
Photo : Guy L'Heureux
Photo : Guy L'Heureux
Photo : Guy L'Heureux

What brings these artists together is the nature of their multidisciplinary research work that questions the place as a space for maneuvering, performance and installation. These interventions will be urban or rural. They will be held on a rooftop, in a facade or in a window, on the tarmac, the gravel or at the crossroads of paths. To document their interventions, these artists have invited photographer Guy L'Heureux, well known in the visual arts community, to document their actions. These photographs will be presented at DARE-DARE and, over the course of the interventions, other elements revealing the passage of time will be added.

Christine Brault strives to capture the path of passers-by on Saint-Laurent Boulevard* and on de Bleury Street**. It is from the other side of the glass that she spies on you and records your route. These traces which accumulate during the intervention, she draws them on a mirror which hardly reflects its own image so much it is soiled by the multiple passages.

Là l'un et l'autre réfléchissent encore.
Ici je viens et repars à la récolte.
Histoire de saisir une bribe ou deux du défilé passager avant d'en perdre le fil et que le tout ne s'envole vers l'oubli.

* Tonic-Concept Salon & Spa Aveda, 3613 boul. Saint-Laurent, Thursdays from 6 to 7 pm, until October 5.
** In front of the Imperial Cinema, de Bleury Street between Sainte-Catherine and Président-Kennedy.

The artist thanks the Canada Council for the Arts.

Marie-Suzanne Désilets will act incognito on the roof of the stores adjacent to St. James Church* from where she will launch 100 bags filled with helium from which this small text will be suspended:

L'air de rien, sujet léger pour tête légère, poches aux yeux, poches d'air, gonflé à bloc et léger comme l'air, mots dégonflés pour flotter jusqu'à vous, récipiendaire de cette pensée sur l'air comprimé.
Je manque d'air
aire d'atterrissage (où êtes-vous?)
air de famille (qui êtes-vous?)

* Located at 463 Sainte-Catherine West, in front of DARE-DARE. The artist will be on the roof the evening of the 5 to 7.

L'artiste remercie Bruno Lachance for everything and to St. James United Church for its hospitality.
This project is dedicated to the two Manons of DARE-DARE.

Jean-François Prost
After a stay in an urban area and two years in hibernation, the black box, stored under snow and rain, stands again nestled against a cliff, hidden in an undergrowth of cedars. A free space for reflection and drifting, this refuge is a place of ambush lost between heaven and earth where the visitor will devote himself to flushing out new associations and constructions.

The artist thanks the Canada Council for the Arts.

Marie-Andrée Rho
For the duration of the exhibition, she inscribes in the urban space as on a painting, a geometry made of colored chalk. In the blue of the sky, her voice modulates and goes from a siren to a bird's cry, from laughter to tears, from a whisper to a sound poetry. Her voice, her gestures, her words seek to reach the other in places of passage that seem to be both nowhere and elsewhere.

Marie-Andrée Rho will give a talk in the gallery on Friday, September 22 at 6:30 p.m. on the occasion of the opening.

The artist thanks the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec.

Philippe Tessier

The artist is interested in the utopias conveyed by new communication media, particularly the Internet. In spite of, or precisely because, the Internet is such a new and potentially powerful communications medium, it has been designated as a new frontier to be colonized. The logical extension of these discourses has fostered the emergence of utopian thinking associated with the Internet. In this project, Tessier takes up old conventions that have evolved around notions of the utopian place and ultimately the Ideal City, now transposed into the Virtual City. The artist creates an installation in three times-three contexts based on a quotation from Montaigne. "He who is everywhere is nowhere", will be written fragmentarily in three spaces: the third fragment, "nowhere", will have a physical presence in the DARE-DARE gallery space. The letters of the words were fabricated (written) using 3' x 6' gypsum panels.