Préface 34

Food for Thoughts

Materiality in its essence and its sense are at the centre of the concerns of the three artists presented in this bulletin, who use it for purposes of symbolization. It is apparent in the effects of subtraction and transformation of the wood of John Cornu’s installation, who’s work at LA CHAMBRE BLANCHE took place in the carpentry workshop before taking form in the gallery. His works occupied two different spaces, in one of them a sculpture which conveys the contemporary idea of ruin and destruction and in the other, a tribute to sculptor Pierre Paquin who became blind and with whom he discusses and exchanges regularly. Author Emma-Charlotte Gobry-Laurencin broaches the work entitled Je tuerai le pianiste by posing the question, is the work: “an expression of the present, an answer to reality, a sample-document witnessing this showbiz society, or an indexed structure specific to our time?” The disappearance of the matter is also perceptible in the work of Sarla Voyer, the second artist in residency this fall. She reproduced her hometown, Quebec City, using glass objects picked in various locations. The exhibition photographs give the impression that there is almost no matter or a blurred matter blending in the context and that reveals the interior of a transparent world, creating an atmosphere of intimacy and fragility. In her text about this artist’s work, author Marie-Hélène Leblanc names ‘’Maison-mère’’ (Mother house) this impression of the mother impulse that is part of the artist’s quest and reflection. To complete this bulletin, we can see the emerging artist Stefane Perraud’s dreamlike universe that pores over the idea of human frailty. Eli Commins’s text expresses well the ambience in which the artist plunges us. He draws inspiration from Didi-Huberman’s book La survivance des lucioles. The artist invites us to observe a nocturnal world by unfolding in space a light sculpture representing a swarm of fireflies, whose illuminations conjure up for him an entire social group with its hopes, its fragility.