André Fournelle studied sculpture by taking workshops in the United States, Italy, Belgium, France, and Germany. His work results from a fusion of various sources of inspiration, including natural elements (water, earth, air, fire), simple geometric forms (circle, triangle, square, cross), and currents of art history (Russian constructivism, pop art, Viennese actionism).
A prolific producer of artworks since 1965, he has created a number of artworks integrated with architecture, including Un moment vivant (2000), at the Taipei airport in Taiwan, and outdoor interventions such as Spirale (1989), a tribute to Robert Smithson, displayed in the Death Valley desert of California.
Artwork description
In Parc Summerlea, situated on the shoreline of Lachine, a steel fence that seems to be broken is arranged in three sections on bases of cement and brick. From the strange displacement of these pieces emanates a sense of freedom. Although the fence defines, circumscribes, frames, and imprisons, the gesture that deforms and displaces it transgresses and liberates. This resolutely political artwork offers an image of resistance, an oxymoron uniting imprisonment and release in a single “state.”
États de choc, whose form was inspired by real damaged fences collected by Fournelle to study their shape, was part of a series of artworks that he made on the subject. This approach resulted from a trip to the artist’s homeland of England, where these deformed barriers appeared to him to be evidence of a transfer of energy as well as the trace of a forgotten activity.