Ainsi passe la gloire du monde
Claudie Gagnon
Claudie Gagnon is a renowned artist whose work oscillate between the ordinary and the extraordinary. During a four-week residency at Avatar she develops a brand-new animated installation, unveiled for the 25th edition of the Mois Multi festival.
A mnemonic installation that draws on the language of 17th-century Flemish still life, memento mori and vanitas, “Ainsi passe la gloire du monde” (Thus Passes the Glory of the World) allegorizes the ephemeral destiny of human beings and the emptiness of their commitments, like everyday graves and inventories of mythological heritages.
With nods to art history, the work stages unusual encounters between the familiar and the wild, the organic and the everyday, weaving together personal elements and universal principles. As narratives about the permanence of humans and objects through artifacts, this work questions the content of the things that outlast us, highlighting the fragility of existence, the fleeting nature and aging of Beings.
The work comes to life in subtle ways, generating in turn the rotation of objects or the pulsation of sound in reference to the notion of time, routine mechanisms and cycles inscribed in perpetual recommencements.
Like the work itself, at the opening, an actor, Michel Marcoux, will take his place through this slow depression, reinforcing the idea of the ephemerality of everyday life and broadening our vision of the beauty of the ordinary.
Credits
Conception: Claudie Gagnon
The artist thanks the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec for its financial support.
Co-produced and co-distributed by Avatar and Productions Recto-Verso.
Official photos: Stéphane Bourgeois
Opening photo (below): Charline Clavier
Opening dates and hours
February 1-11
Tuesday to Friday: 1pm to 8pm
Saturday and Sunday: 10am to 5pm
Vernissage February 2
Location
Studio Avatar
541 Rue Saint-Vallier E
5e étage
Québec, QC G1K 3P9
Free entrance – no reservation
Claudie Gagnon
Originally from Montreal, Claudie Gagnon is a self-taught multidisciplinary artist who has been active for over thirty years, and who now lives and works in Quebec City.
Her practice takes many forms: installation, living painting, sculpture, video, photography, food art, creations for young audiences, collage and art integrated into architecture. Her work is not only presented in art venues – artist-run centers, galleries, museums, theaters – but also in places chosen for their potential to stimulate the creation of in situ works (barns, gardens, factories, disused churches, apartments earmarked for demolition, etc.).
She recycles everyday objects as well as concepts and more or less notorious works from the history of art, in addition to taking an interest in the visual and sonic markers that make up our high and popular cultures. Her creations are imbued with playfulness and poetry, at once enchanting and disquieting, provoking delight and unease, vacillating between the ordinary and the extraordinary. Perishable elements, such as food and plants, express the life cycles and the effects of time on all things.
Her work has been shown in artist-run centers, galleries, museums and festivals in North America, Asia and Europe. Her pieces are part of the collections of the MNBAQ, MACM, MBAM, Musée d’art de Joliette and several private collections. She has held creative residencies in the Paris and Mexico City studios of the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec.
Presented in February of each year, the Mois Multi is an event produced and organized by Productions Recto-Verso since 2000. The festival program brings together innovative artworks in the field of multidisciplinary, electronic and digital arts. The Mois Multi seeks to express the conceptual and technological mutations that are shaking up both the practices and unexpected forms of « multi art ». The presentation of interactive shows, performances, installations, immersive environments and artworks that merge languages, materials, techniques, forms and artistic processes of all kinds is what makes it unique.
