Nicolas Baier, who lives and works in Montréal, holds a bachelor’s degree in visual arts from Concordia University. In 2003, he had a solo exhibition titled Scènes de genre at the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal. On the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of Place Ville Marie, in 2012, he produced Autoportrait. The work, reproducing a meeting room in nickel, was installed under a glass cube on the esplanade of the tower designed by Ieoh Ming Pie. Baier’s works are in numerous private and public collections, including the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, the Musée des beaux-arts du Québec, and the Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography.
Artwork description
Applied onto six thousand feet of a curtain wall that encases the façade of the Visual Arts pavilion, this mural has been confirmed to be the largest in the history of the program to integrate art into architecture administered by the Ministère de la culture et des communications. The imagery makes numerous historical, artistic and institutional references to the emblematic flora of Montreal’s four founding communities; to the Victorian garden and stained glass windows of the neighboring St. James Apostle Church; to the virtual greening of Mackay Street; to the silver screen of the former York Theatre; and with its vast bouquet of resplendent foliage – to the diversity of the Concordia community.