PIERRE BOURGAULT
les Grands Grands dessins
2006 - 2010
I like to hear the story told by these figures, the quality of the sound and rhythm. It is a pure and abstract form of communication, untainted by the meaning of words, reflecting the intention of the communicator in a fundamental way.
Biography
Pierre Bourgault lives in Saint-Jean-Port-Joli. Owing to an artistic path linked closely to lived (and thus ever-changing) experiences, Bourgault’s works have been enriched by various crossings—of lands, rivers, texts, speech, encounters, readings. His aim is to create a resonance, a reverberation, between his intense artistic reflections and the resulting forms and materials.
The artist’s works have been presented at many well-known sites, including the Custom House Gallery (Westport, Ireland), the Toronto Sculpture Garden, the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec (Quebec City), the Jardins de Métis (Grand-Métis, Quebec), the Haifa Museum of Art (Haifa, Israel), the Middelheim Museum (Antwerp, Belgium), and in Matsuyama, Japan. Bourgault has created his ephemeral drawings on water in New York, Quebec City, Cape Breton, Magdalen Islands and Scotland. The founding director of the École de sculpture de Saint-Jean-Port-Joli, Bourgault is also a co-founder of the artist-run centre Est-Nord-Est.
About the work
Whether analyzing the configuration of nautical charts, sailing in a Zodiac equipped with a satellite navigation system, voyaging across an entire maritime zone or improvising on rapid sea lanes, Pierre Bourgault seeks to construct closed-surface drawings on water. On the one hand, navigation imposes certain rules and constraints (tides, currents, depths), which the charts represent in a kind of geometric animation. On the other hand, the weather conditions (winds, storms, etc.) determine—or deconstruct—the real possibilities of making the planned voyage. Instinctively, the artist attempts to reconstruct from memory the drawing that disappears behind the boat, to imagine its form while accepting the fact that the drawing is dictated by the vessel.