Public art plays a central role in the practice of Jean-Pierre Morin, who is interested in its potential to incite reflection and to generate artistic and aesthetic situations. Since the late 1980s, the artist has created about thirty public artworks that stun by their monumentality and formal beauty. Morin’s work is rooted in a deep interest for materiality and form, relating to installation art through its relationship to space and site. Born in 1951, the artist studied sculpture in Saint-Jean-Port-Joli (1968-1971) and obtained a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Université Laval (1978) as well as a Master of Fine Arts in sculpture from Concordia University (1984). Since then, he has shown his work in Quebec, Toronto and the United States in twenty solo exhibitions and over 80 group exhibitions. In 2003, the Musée Régional de Rimouski showcased his work in the exhibition ” De l’objet comme poétique esthétique : Jean-Pierre Morin “, and in 2008, he won the Prix de la Fondation Monique et Robert Parizeau for his work “Trombe”, installed on the site of the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec.
In 2016, he is the subject of a huge survey exhibition at the art center 1700 La Poste. This exhibition is accompanied by a documentary and definitive book on his career and art.
- 17 Artworks
- 1h
- Berri-UQAM metro station
Saint-Laurent metro station
Artwork description
“The fundamental guiding concept behind the creation of this project was always the meaning – indeed, the very spirit – of the place which we call the Grande Bibliothèque, or Great Library: a place where knowledge is stored and passed on. I started by thinking about the artwork’s overall aspect: given its projected location and the site’s vertical dimensions, I knew it had to be tall. From the floor at the metro level and where Espace Jeunes is located, four massive steel blocks rise up and separate slightly, so that light could show between them. At the street level, there is a piece of aluminum […] that might perhaps suggest a shower of sparks leaping out from the underground city. I also took the building materials and its architecture […] into account. Like glass, aluminum is a highly reflective material, and I wanted to retain that luminous, radiant quality. Corten steel is an interesting metal because of its strength, texture and reddish colour that contrasts with the glass and aluminum […] and accentuates the work’s visual aspect.”
Source : Artist’s description