Révolutions

source: sigapnet
Révolutions est un exemple probant d’intégration par la Ville de Montréal d’œuvres d’art public dans les projets d’aménagement. La sculpture d’aluminium de huit mètres de haut se trouve au centre du parc Maisonneuve-Cartier, dans un quartier en voie de transformation.

Faisant écho à l’escalier de la station de métro qui se trouve sous l’œuvre, aux escaliers courbes typiques du paysage montréalais, aux structures de métal du pont Jacques-Cartier et aux manèges du parc d’attractions La Ronde situés à proximité, la sculpture d’aluminium synthétise des références visuelles spécifiques du coin. L’escalier noué évoque par ailleurs des symboles universels comme ceux du recyclage (anneau de Möbius) et de l’infini de même que l’histoire de l’art à travers l’œuvre Monument à la IIIe Internationale de Vladimir Tatline.

En multipliant les références, l’escalier transformé se pose comme une énigme dans le lieu. L’œuvre est un passage de l’utile à l’inutile, du réel au poétique, du banal au sublime. C’est une « révolution » dans le sens d’un mouvement cyclique et continu qui tourne sur lui-même.

L’artiste, qui intervient fréquemment dans l’espace public montréalais par ses œuvres permanentes et temporaires, laisse généralement poindre un sens politique par la métaphore. Dialoguant ici avec les deux sens du mot «révolution», l’œuvre peut être comprise comme un parti pris pour le changement dans la continuité plutôt que dans la rupture. Pour de Broin, « l’escalier fait penser à ce qui revient sans se répéter, transformé dans son cycle. Chacun peut se projeter dans cet espace courbe et entrer dans le jeu des révolutions ».

Michel de Broin, Révolutions (2003).
Collection Ville de Montréal
Localisation: Parc Maisonneuve-Cartier, arrondissement de Ville-Marie.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
source: sigapnet
Révolutions is a work that probes the Ville de Montréal’s integration of public art works in development projects. The eight-metre-high aluminium sculpture is located in the centre of Parc Maisonneuve-Cartier, in a neighbourhood undergoing change.

Making reference to the stairway in the Métro Station that is underneath the work, to the typically curved staircases that are part of the Montréal architecture, to the metal structure of Jacques-Cartier Bridge and the fairground attractions at nearby La Ronde, the aluminium sculpture synthesizes visual references specific to the area. The knotted staircase also evokes universal symbols such as recycling, the Möbius band, infinity and even art history through Vladimir Tatlin’s Monument to the Third International.

As the references multiply, the transformed stairway is posed like an enigma in the park. The work is a passage from the useful to the useless, from the real to the poetic, from the everyday to the sublime. It is a “revolution” in the sense of a continuous cyclical movement that turns around on itself.

The artist, who intervenes frequently in Montréal public spaces with permanent and temporary artworks, usually implies a political meaning through metaphor. Dialoguing with the two meanings of the word “revolution,” the work can be understood as a bias for change through continuation rather than rupture. For de Broin, “the staircase makes one think of what comes back without being repeated, transformed in its cycle. Everyone can see themselves in the curved space and enter into the play of revolutions.”.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
source: micheldebroinorg
Ranging from assemblage to video and photography, Michel de Broin has developed a constantly expanding visual vocabulary. Piece by piece, the objects involved are sometimes universally recognizable but their behaviour defies their functions and uses taken for granted. Crafting new relationships between waste, productivity, risk and consumption, established modes of signification are endangered, yielding retooled technological environments that feed a constant questioning.
De Broin has exhibited widely in Europe and North America. The first mid-career institutional survey of his work was mounted by the Musée d’Art Contemporain, Montréal, earlier this year. De Broin has held solo exhibitions and projetcs like Reciprocal Energy, at Musée d’art contemporain Val-de-Marne, France; Machinations at Musée national des beaux arts du Québec, QC; Reverse Entropy at the Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin; Disruption from Within at Plug In, Institute of Contemporary Art (Winnipeg, MB) ; Épater la Galerie at Villa Merkel, Esslingen, Germany. Group exhibitions include Beyond the Crisis, The 6th Curitiba Biennial, Brazil; Car Fetish. I drive, therefore I am, Museum Tinguely, Basel, Switzerland; Acclimatation, Centre d’art Villa Arson, Nice, France; Untethered, Eyebeam, New York, NY; De-con-struction, National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, ON; Canada Dreaming, Kunstverein Wolfsburg, Germany; Damage Control, Museum of Canadian Contemporary Art, Toronto, ON; and Au courant, Center for Curatorial Studies, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York.
In 2014 de Broin will unveil Mehr Licht, a newly commissioned 20-meter project in Berlin for the Marie-Elisabeth-Lüders-Haus, at the Bundestag federal parliament. His public art works and commissions in the last decade have included Possibilities, 2012, Mississauga; Interlace, 2012, Changwong; Majestic, 2011, New Orleans; Revolution, 2010, Rennes; Arc, Montréal, 2009; La maîtresse de la Tour Eiffel, 2009, Paris; Overflow, 2008, Toronto; Encircling, Christchurch, 2006; Shared Propulsion Car, 2005, New York and 2007, Toronto; and Révolutions, 2003, Parc Maisonneuve-Cartier, Montréal.
Recipient of the 2007 Sobey Art Award, De Broin has also received grants from the Harpo Foundation (Los Angeles) and Krasner-Pollock Foundation (New York). His works are part of several private and public collections in France, Germany and Canada. Most recently, he has been awarded a residency at the International Studio and Curatorial Program in New York, which will begin March 2014.
Michel de Broin currently lives and works in Montreal, Canada.