MONTREAL/November 20, 2008—
Concordia University is pleased to announce that Quebec artist, Pierre Blanchette, has been commissioned to create a major public art work to be dramatically incorporated into the new John Molson School of Business (JMSB) building, opening in September 2009. Located on the corner of Guy and De Maisonneuve streets in the heart of Quartier Concordia, the work is part of the Integration of the Arts into Architecture and the Environment Program of Quebec (commonly referred to as the 1% program). Blanchette’s designs will be presented on Friday, November 21, 2008 at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (MMFA) symposium, Visions for Public Art in Today’s Urban Landscape.
Measuring six metres high by 15 metres wide and seven metres deep, Blanchette’s work will envelop the exterior walls of a monumental room “floating” above the ground floor atrium of the JMSB building. It will be visible from both the interior and exterior. Composed of sapele wood (an African wood similar to mahogany) with criss-cross bands of ebony and ionized blue aluminum, it makes numerous social, historical and civic references. Inspired by the heated exchanges depicted in Renaissance-artist Paolo Uccello’s military scenes, as well as the abstractions of the urban grid as seen in Piet Mondrian’s Broadway Boogie Woogie, Blanchette captures at once the ideological dynamics of the business school and the restless motion in the Quartier Concordia.
It is the latest example of Concordia’s commitment to showcasing public art as a means of engaging and educating the communities that it serves. By Fall 2009, at this one intersection of the Quartier Concordia, there will be four significant pieces including one by Blanchette, as well as Geneviève Cadieux’s Lierre sur pierre (a slated 550 square-foot mural featuring a vine of reflective, anodized metal attached to a limestone wall of the JMSB building), a stone sculpture by Situ Jie (1920-2005) of the Canadian humanitarian recently restored by the City of Montreal in Place Norman Bethune, and a 1966 abstract concrete mural by Claude Théberge (1935-2008) at the edge of the Guy-Concordia Metro Building.
The university is establishing itself as a champion of public art, which is reflected by the strong Concordia presence at the MMFA symposium. Director of Special Projects and Cultural Affairs, Clarence Epstein, Fine Arts Professor Francois Morelli, and one of Concordia’s graduates, the internationally-renown artist, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, will all be participating.
http://web2.concordia.ca/publicart/
www.mmfa.qc.ca/symposium
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Source :
Tanya Churchmuch
Senior Media Relations Advisor
Concordia University
