Opening the new summer season, the Musee d’Art Contemporain in Montreal (MAC) presents a critical review of the work of artist Michel de Bruan and we are pleased to introduce it to our readers. The first major Canadian museum exhibition in Montreal on the practice of the artist combines about thirty works, some of them new and specially commissioned.
At the same time, MAC is also preparing the first solo exhibition in Canada of renowned Brooklyn artist Eve Sussman and Rufus Corporation.
In preparation for Michel de Bruan’s exhibition and in selecting works from over the past decade, gallerists have noted the artist’s sustained interest in notions of resistance, appropriation and recycling of ordinary everyday objects into works of contemporary art. Over the past twenty-plus years, this multidisciplinary artist has continually challenged all existing systems and their principles.
Using a highly critical yet playful perspective on everyday objects and preconceived notions, de Bruun uses analogies and metaphors in his work to expose our rigid beliefs and everyday efforts of power and to force a new perspective on the world around us.
The creative designer explores the simultaneous coexistence of intentionally opposite elements and the relationship between the eccentric and the ordinary. The master describes his creative process as an experiment, when a foreign element is introduced into an established and well-established system to see the result of an unexpected reaction.
A prime example of this kind of “research” is the work “Silent Scream,” a prolific work from 2006-2007 that demonstrates a device designed to silence the sound produced by an alarm system by creating a vacuum ⎯ an environment where sound cannot propagate. Visitors can see the movement of the hammer striking the glass cover, but they do not hear the expected siren sound.
Michel de Bruan is constantly using new experimental techniques in his work, and as a result, his works are dynamically evolving, evolving. Often, the lines between preparatory sketch, model, preliminary documentation and the final product are blurred and blurred. An intermediate model can become a work in its own right, transformed and reborn later as sculpture, photography or video.
The Musee d’Art Contemporain exhibition will also present updated versions of some works shown earlier, such as Embrase-Moi (1993-2013) and Objet Perdu (2002-2013). The audience will also see new works created by the artist in 2013 especially for this show, such as the conceptual sculpture Blowback (where the World War II howitzers are joined by a tubular element that creates physical and symbolic connections between opposing forces, the blowback is a metaphor for a war won by the love sabotage of two cannons), Anthropométrie, Etant donnés, L’abimé of Freedom Square, L‘Etendue De L’abimé.
Born in Montreal in 1970, Michel de Bruan won the Sobey Art Award in 2007, the Québec Triennial and in 2008 the Musee d’Art Contemporain in Montreal. His work has been exhibited in Europe, the United States and Canada and he has presented a number of large art installations (permanent and temporary) such as Majestic (New Orleans, 2011), and Révolution (Rennes, 2010).
What are some of the specific high-tech waste materials used by Michel de Bruan in his works at the Musee d’Art Contemporain, Montreal?