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La montagne des jours

1991

Gilbert Boyer

Gilbert Boyer has a bachelor’s degree in visual arts from the Université du Québec à Montréal (1973) and a master’s degree in visual arts from Concordia University (1986). His work offers a bridge between the everyday and history, art and the public space. Boyer has produced a number of works of public art, including I Looked for Sarah Everywhere (1994) at the Toronto Sculpture Garden and Adresses personnelles (1996) in Aulnoy-Lez-Valenciennes, France.

Mémoire ardente

1994

Details

Artwork description

Gilbert Boyer’s in situ intervention is composed of five granite disks set in the ground beside paths in Mount Royal Park. Engraved on the disks are bits of conversations heard in the park by the artist.

The natural environment of Mount Royal, situated within the heart of the city, the familiar discussions to which it gives rise, and the strolls for which it is the setting are thus represented by what may be thought of as a tribute to the way that Montréalers experience their “mountain.”

Viewers who discover La montagne des jours by chance as they walk can freely appropriate the words that the artwork has engraved in the ground – the memories, feelings, and thoughts that it evokes. In fact, Boyer thinks of his work as an act of sharing. “From the spring thaw to the first snows of winter, the poetic dialogues on the granite disks recount the daily life of Montreal and converse with everyone.” – Gilbert Boyer, 1995. 1

1. Letter from Boyer to Hélène Thibodeau of the Public Art Bureau (our translation).

Favorites of

Sylvette Babin

“The five granite disks that form La montagne des jours is a defiant reaction to the usual monumentality of urban art. They are almost invisible, you find them by chance during a walk on Mount Royal, if you are paying attention to the ground surface. I particularly like this discreet and respectful approach to the natural landscape where they are set. All the more reason for the snatches of conversation engraved in each stone to immerse us into reveries that take us far away. In our imagination, the work becomes monumental, as we furtively drop into the intimacy between two friends, lovers and let ourselves be carried off by the poetry of the space and the words. “Let’s go by the Lady Road, something I want to show / Listen … it’s time to leave, evening is in the breeze / Thunder / From time to time I look up, and there’s the landscape. That way the pleasure lasts / It’s beautiful, right? When I want to read the last pages of a good book, I plant myself here / Far / Far / Far / Fly over the mountain till you fall asleep” G. Boyer ”