Patrick Bérubé obtained a Master’s Degree in Visual and Media Arts from Université du Québec à Montréal in 2005. A finalist for the Pierre Ayot Prize in 2010 and 2011, he has shown his work at a number of national and international exhibitions and major events. He gained recognition, notably, in 2010 at the exhibition “This is not a Casino” at Casino Luxembourg in Luxembourg City and at the Villa Merkel in Germany. In 2005, he won the jury prize at the 3rd Manifestation internationale d’art de Québec. He has also completed several artist residencies, including the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec in Spain in 2009, in Paris in 2007 and in Bordeaux in 2011. He held his very first solo exhibition in New York City in January 2013. Patrick Bérubé is an active member of the Clark Gallery and a founding member of the Collectif Pique-Nique. Since 2010, he has created three works integrating architecture. He works mainly in sculpture, installation and public intervention. Space and place are very important in his work, both in the creative process and in the work itself. He poses questions about our behaviours and reactions to different situations of powerlessness and vulnerability. By creating anomalies and discontinuities, Patrick Bérubé destabilizes, surprises and compels the passer-by to stop and ask questions about these irregularities.
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Artwork description
Écologie des lieux is a monumental sculpture composed of two white-painted aluminum structures, with one segment in bronze. Meeting above a pedestrian path, they form the geographic contours of the Sainte-Marie and Saint-Jacques districts, which are joined to form the Centre-Sud sector and bring together neighbourhoods such as the Village and the Quartier des Faubourgs.
The work is inspired by both the urban environment and nature. Its shapes evoke the neighbourhood’s houses, cornices, and roofs, and also refer to treetops and the veins of leaves. The street grid thus becomes the network of veins in two huge suspended leaves that form a canopy above passersby. This reference to the urban forest brings to mind the diversity of ecosystems and the human, cultural, and social richness of the Centre-Sud sector.
The trunks feature tree-bark motifs. The trunk north of the pedestrian path was developed from digitally transformed photographs of bark – a nod to the creativity and innovation for which these neighbourhoods are known.
Citizen participation is an important part of the project. During a co-creation workshop, residents made clay models of part of the bronze trunk. Their handprints are now incorporated into it, testifying to their presence and their contribution to neighbourhood life. Thus, Bérubé establishes a dialogue among nature, technology, territory, and community. With its form evoking both canopy and portal, Écologie des lieux acts as an urban landmark, meeting place, and symbol of belonging.