Jérôme Fortin

Recent activities / News

-Galerie d’art Stewart-Hall, « L’Abstraction au Québec : Hier et aujourd’hui » (du 12 mai au 22 juin), commissaire : Joyce Millar, www.ville.pointe-claire.com
-Fondation Derouin, Les Jardins du Précambrien, « Le Voyage », Val-David, commissaire : Danielle Lord, www.jardinsduprecambrien.com
-25e Symposium international d’art contemporain de Baie-Saint-Paul (du 3 août au 2 septembre), « S’engager ici et maintenant, s'engager dans l'art », commissaire : Nicolas Mavrikakis, www.centredart-bsp.qc.ca/symposium.aspx
-Résidence d’artiste et exposition Tokyo Wonder Site in November 2007, www.tokyo-ws.org/english
-Collège de Maisonneuve, Clinique d’hygiène dentaire, œuvre du 1% , Politique d'intégration des arts à l'architecture et à l'environnement des bâtiments et des sites gouvernementaux et publics
-Festival off-courts, 8e rencontres du court-métrage France-Québec (du 1er au 9 septembre), Trouville-sur-mer, www.off-courts.com

With his sculpture-installations, Jérôme Fortin combines his work with cabinets of curiosities — the 17th century's private museums — and the 20th and 21st centuries' practice of mass consumption. Corks, plastic bottles, books, matches, nails, and tin cans are cunningly handled and assembled in several series of visual curiosities. Their colours, forms, textures, and volumes suggest the flowers, seashells, jewelry, and amulets once collected by the curious for their exotic flavour. The poetic, mysterious allure of Fortin's sculptures sets aside the usual aspect of everyday objects so as to exalt in our contemporary gaze.

At 34, Mr. Fortin has participated in numerous group and solo exhibitions. His installations have been selected for significant exhibitions such as "La Biennale de Montréal 1998", "Growth & Risk Québec New York" (2001), "Officina America" in Bologna, Italy (2002) and "L'envers des apparences" in Montéal, Québec (2005). His first solo show within the institutional framework of a museum, Ici et là, was presented in 2002 at the Musée d'art de Joliette and recently toured throughout Canada. It was also presented in Tokyo in 2006. His work can be found in the collections of the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, the Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal, the Musée d'art de Joliette and several private collections. In 2007 the Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal will be presenting a solo exhibition of recent works by Jérôme Fortin. For more information on Jérôme Fortin please consult his extensive personal website.

June 15 - August 13
Trashformations: Michel de Broin, Jérôme Fortin, Karilee Fuglem, Louis Joncas

In Trashformations, Jérôme Fortin presents for the first time in Montreal three large format Seascapes which were installed in February 2005 at ARCO (Madrid). The Marines (Seascapes) series was developed in the northeastern part of Quebec (Saint-Jean-port-Joli) during the artist's residency in 2001. The artist states: "Every day, I walked along the shoreline from the northeast to the town. I patiently gathered all the plastic bottles that the peak spring tides dumped onto the riverbank. The St. Lawrence River displayed an amazing presence. Some of my clearest insights came from watching the shifting waves and tides. At the Centre, I spent my evenings cutting up the multi-coloured containers into long, thin strips. I stapled these plastic strips directly onto the walls of my workshop to make Tondos, a form that brings to mind portholes or the sea seen through a spyglass.. The plastic strips were densely lined up in layers to suggest a wave motion. The bottlenecks that appear here and there show the number of bottles that went into each seascape. Each work has its own plastic qualities, depending on the different textures, forms and colours of the bottles. For instance, certain transparencies produce an effect like the reflection of light on water."

Jérôme Fortin, recipient of the 2004 prix Pierre-Ayot, has had work shown in several group exhibitions in Quebec and abroad, such as the Biennale de Montréal in 1998, Galerie UQAM in 2000, and the Officina America in Bologna in 2002. For a residency in New York, he produced work that was to be presented as part of the exhibition Growth and Risk - Québec New York 2001, but that was tragically interrupted by the events of September 11. The New York Times published on 11 September 2001 a major article on his process of creation: Plumbing a City's Curiosities in the Name of Art by Randy Kennedy. His first solo show within the institutional framework of a museum, Ici et là, was presented in 2002 at the Musée d'art de Joliette and is currently touring in Canada. It will be presented in Tokyo in 2006. His work can be found in the collections of the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, the Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal, the Musée d'art de Joliette and several private collections. The Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal is presenting is work as part of the current group show: Envers des apparences.

February 18 - March 13, 2004
Jérôme Fortin: Tondos

Tondos, the first series of prints ever made by Jérôme Fortin, was exhibited in Montreal at the gallery Pierre-François Ouellette, from February 18 to March 13, 2004. The series of prints presented was developed during a residency in the Spring 2003 at the Ateliers Graff. Inspired by his previous body of work Seascapes/Marines, these prints are collographs made from bands of shredded paper.

"This form of printing uses materials that are arranged in a collage form. Through the repetition of gestures involving folding, the motifs that emerge remind some times rosettes and at other times the agitated surface of the sea. The gallery is presenting the entire series of prints, each published in an edition of 10. We are also pleased to announce that the first two prints of the series, Tondo I and II, have been acquired by the National Library of Quebec for their permanent collections of print.

Art, for Jérôme Fortin, is quite obviously an activity to which he devotes unstinting practice; and he does it with skilfulness that verges on magic. In his endless play with materials, printmaking in Fortin’s work is unexpected; his prints, moreover, renew the genre. From the outset, they intrigue us: we wonder about the underlying technique. Simple sheets of printed paper, generally taken from a single book, cut end-to-end and glued onto a round cardboard.
 
While relatively uniform visually, they each have a personality. Here is an astounding investigation into variations of some motifs – variations on a theme, as musicians say. Tirelessly, though never tiring, Jérôme explores a whole range of textures, constructions evocative of Aztec or Inca drawings, of ancient writings, of plant or fabric. One can draw up a long list of associations, for the allusions are intricate.
 
Before our eyes, a bouquet of nuances – greys, whites, blacks. Whether blurred or sharp, the series explores countless varieties of these hues, inviting our gaze to follow its meandering course. And yet, the objects that served as plates, the moulds, are as fascinating as the prints themselves. Distinguished by their colour and low relief, they are works in their own right. In truth, while dexterity plays an important role in the production of an art work, time and effort are also a factor." - Pascale Beaudet

 

Of note also is the concurrent solo exhibition of Jérôme Fortin`s newest sculptures currently on view at Plein Sud, a center for contemporary art in Longueuil, Quebec. The show entitled Après l'atelier is on until March 14, 2004. The artist thanks the Canada Council and the Conseil des arts et des letters du Québec for their support. The Ministère des Communications et de la Culture du Québec has contributed to the exhibition Tondos.

July 13 - September 8, 2002
Jérôme Fortin: Solitudes

The new production of twelve series of folded books created by Quebec artist Jérôme Fortin, will be exhibited in Montreal at the gallery Pierre-François Ouellette art contemporain, from July 13 to September 8, 2002. Solitudes is a project that brings together hundreds of books that have been transformed and reassembled into tableaux. By repeatedly folding each page of paper, Jérôme Fortin achieves stunning effects of texture, form, line, groove and colour that delineate the exhibition space. Novels, colouring books, telephone books, comic strips and crosswords provide source material for works that are repeatedly manipulated in ways that require regularity and patience. The methodological approach taken by the artist is almost meditative; Fortin lends himself to the spirit of solitude and isolation characteristic of reading, and then shares with his audience these transformations of common objects into original and varied large-format compositions.

Produced from everyday objects, and based on the concept of sixteenth century cabinets of curiosity (in which collectors and the curious marvelled at the exotic findings displayed therein), Fortin's work dates back to 1996, when he created genuine curios from matchsticks, cork stoppers, tin cans, and other odds and ends. In 2000, the object - neither wholly jewel-like nor amulet-like, but always visually unique, gave way to work developed in series, where forms are repeated and variations are essentially based on colour - telephone cords, books, plastic bottles - returning the transformed and variegated object back into its original industrial nature.

Fortin's work has been shown in several group exhibitions in Quebec and abroad, such as the Biennale de Montréal in 1998, Galerie UQAM in 2000, and the Officina America in Bologna in 2002. For a residency in New York, he produced work that was to be presented as part of the exhibition Growth and Risk - Québec New York 2001, but that was tragically interrupted by the events of September 11. His first solo show within the institutional framework of a museum, is currently being held at the Musée d'art de Joliette. The artist would like to thank the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec, the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, and the art magazine Parachute for their contributions towards this project.