Marie-Jeanne Musiol
Whether it is through the portrait, the landscape, or electromagnetic photography, Marie-Jeanne Musiol explores different levels of the image's emergence on paper and the limits of photographic representation. She endeavours to capture the intangible qualities of her subjects through black and white photography. Concerned with the relationship between matter, energy, and memory, Musiol's work has led her to the Kirlian process, which captures the energy field of objects that have been subjected to an electromagnetic-wave discharge. Musiol further develops this idea into what she describes as "a directory of energy configurations in which the imprint of objects and thought-forms modifying living things is encoded in light."
Marie-Jeanne Musiol's photographic installations have been exhibited in galleries and museums in Canada and abroad : Galerie Aubes, Montreal (1988); The Canadian Cultural Centre, Rome (1989); The Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography, Ottawa (1992, 1993); the Liana and Danny Taran Gallery, Montreal (1994); Vox image contemporaine, Montreal (1995); The Leonard and Bina Ellen Gallery, Montreal (1995); Galerie Yves LeRoux, Montreal (1996); the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, Québec City (1996); Les Brasseurs, Liège, Belgium and Centre d'Art Santa Mònica, Barcelona (1996); Le Mois de la Photo, Montreal (1997); Gallery 44, Toronto (1996,1999,2004); The Montreal Commemorative Center for the Holocaust (2000); Dazibao, Montreal (2001); The Ottawa Art Gallery (1993, 2001,2002,2003); AxeNéo7, Gatineau (1991, 2002); The Armando Museum, Amersfoort, Holland (2002); the Musée d'art urbain, Montreal (2002/2004); Pierre-François Ouellette art contemporain, Montreal (2003, 2006); La Galerie des Grands Bains Douches, Marseille, France (2003); Oboro, Montreal (2005); The Montreal Botanical Garden (2005); ZKM, Karlsruhe, Germany (2005), Conde Duque Medialab, Madrid; V2/Tent, Rotterdam; Ludwig Museum, Budapest and La Maison Européenne de la photographie, Paris (2006).
She has produced limited edition books: Le trou noir de l'histoire (1989), Sept ouvertures (1991) and In the Shadow of the Forest (Auschwitz-Birkenau) (1998). She has also worked extensively in Auschwitz, probing the nature of living memory through a series of photographic installations and a video titled Do Falling Leaves Go Unseen (1995). The video Bodies of Light. Fields of Light. States (2000) registers various aspects of electromagnetic fields around plants. The book Bodies of Light published in 2001 presents recordings of energy emissions around biological bodies and has won numerous design awards. Her works are in the collections of the Museum of Contemporary Photography, Ottawa; Bibliothèque Nationale de France; Bibliothèque nationale du Québec; National Library of Canada; Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, The Ottawa Art Gallery and Musée d'art urbain de Montréal among others. For more information on Marie-Jeanne Musiol consult her personal website.
October 21 - December 2, 2006
Marie-Jeanne Musiol: Miroirs du cosmos
Ottawa-based Arc Poetry Magazine is heading on down the 417 to Montreal for the launch of its latest issue. Pierre-Francois Ouellette art contemporain will host the event as part of the festivities marking the end of Marie-Jeanne Musiol's Miroirs du cosmos exhibition there on December 2, 2006.
Arc 57 features Arc's international Poem of the Year Contest winners and editors' choices along with the winners of the Diana Brebner Prize, which celebrates work by National Capital Region poets yet to publish in book form. Poets Alexandra Pasian and Mark Frutkin, as well as this year's Brebner Prize winner, Rhonda Douglas, and honourable mention, Sandra Ridley, will read from their selections in the latest Arc.
The event runs from 3:30 to 5:30 pm.
The gallery is pleased to celebrate its 5th anniversary by inviting you to the vernissage of Marie-Jeanne Musiol's exhibition Miroirs du cosmos on Saturday October 21 from 2:30 to 5:30. The artist will be presenting a new series of photographs mounted in lightboxes and a 15 mn video with a soundtrack by John Mark Seck et Alvaro de Minaya. The artist states:
"After having recorded the light imprint of numerous plants to constitute a small energy botany, I set out to probe the bright corona surrounding them. With a video tool, I entered their body of light and some particularities of the topography suddenly became apparent: configurations of explosions, cocoons or streams of light, incandescence, black holes. Light surrounding the plant recorded in its electromagnetic field also contains in its ethereal substance a mirror image of the cosmos. In a surprising inversion of scale, the structures of the infinite seen through the Hubble telescope appear wrapped and contained in the streams of light emanating from the living.
Curiously, this parabolic effect becomes manifest at the cross-road of analog and digital probing. The light field of the plant is captured on a black-and-white negative. Observed through the naked eye or printed on photographic paper, the cosmic deployment in the light field of the plant is not apparent. But once scanned, the negative yields information with cosmic echoes buried in the silver layer. A third dimension is revealed in the image where matter appears to become a substrate of light with its surprising mirror forms.
Mirrors of the Cosmos maps out five different itineraries where the topography of four plants and a mineral guide the video at the heart of this terra incognita. The details vary from one plant to another - from plectranthus to female fern - to create an unexpected survey of a natural irradiating universe. Some fifteen light boxes for their part freeze details, particular moments, framings of landscapes appearing and organizing in space: figures of planets, constellations, black holes. Here the photographic image goes from digital to positive transparency. The apparent grain evokes the origins of the light photographs, reminiscent of the “radiant” forest where Goethe would experience mystical enlightenment. What is the most startling observation of this voyage to the heart of the light of plants? The total immersion of plants in a luminous state, including the zones of dark energy."
The gallery is proud to inform you that the current issue of the photography magazine CV ciel variable (no 70) contains several reproductions of these works which accompany an article by Sylvain Campeau. Also of note is that the poetry magazine ARC will publish in their next issue (no. 57) another group of photographs from the series.. A poetry reading and artist's talk will take place at the gallery on 2 December during the launch of the magazine.
The photographic installations by Marie-Jeanne Musiol have been exhibited in galleries and museums in Canada and abroad. Her installation Bodies of Light has been presented at La Maison Européenne de la Photographie in Paris as part of the exhibition Résonances which travelled at ZKM in Karlsruhe in Germany, at Conde Duque Medialab in Madrid, at V2/ Tent in Rotterdam et at the Ludwig Museum in Budapest.
Please note: The gallery will be closed from November 7-10 due to our participation at Art Toronto
The gallery is open Tuesday to Saturday from 12:00 until 5:30 pm and on appointment.
August 30 - October 4, 2003
Marie-Jeanne Musiol: Nouveaux Portraits
The gallery Pierre-François Ouellette art contemporain is pleased to present the solo exhibition entitled Nouveaux Portraits by Marie-Jeanne Musiol from August 30 to October 4. The artist will be present at the gallery on Saturday September 6 and during Les Journées de la Culture on Saturday, September 27. The artist states: I have been making portraits since 1992. They are studies of figures emerging or disappearing in black space. These "New Portraits" show the subject's now legible face, and some variations thereof - small accompanying photos taken from a sequence of shots, from which I choose one for enlargement in the definitive portrait. Each of the people photographed is an acquaintance who accepted to look at the camera during a very quick session that left little time to pose. The subject is simply there, caught with no fuss.
I see in these images a condensation of the possibilities of the portrait and of photographic material. The pronounced granularity of the photographic dot has some of the consistency of the atom. Like the atom, the dot is ensconced in a continuum with millions of other dots that bind and unbind to form the image. In this ceaseless movement, subject and photograph materialize as one possibility among others. The body clearly appears for what it is: an aggregate. Just as the dots crystallize to form the solid and visible body, they can also loosen to become carriers of immaterial frequencies in a field of energy. The delimitation between the solid body and its energized counterpart is strewn with holes - the spaces one observes between the photographic dots of the portrait.
The artist and the gallery would like to note that another solo exhibition of Marie-Jeanne Musiol's work is still on view in Montréal until October 1. Entitled Silences. Marie-Jeanne Musiol, the exhibition organized by the Musée art urbain is composed of seven large format images that can be seen on three outdoor sites: in the Old Port (in front of the Science Centre), at the Marché Bonsecours (South face of the building) and at the Café Cherrier. The Musée d'art urbain also launched a publication on this work.
Marie-Jeanne Musiol is featured currently and until September in a solo show entitled: "Silences" at the Musée d'art urbain de Montréal. A catalogue accompanies the exhibition/A noter aussi la publication qui accompagne l'exposition: En marge de l'exposition Silences. Marie-Jeanne Musiol, qui se poursuit jusqu'au 1er septembre 2003, le Musée d'art urbain lance ces jours-ci une publication qui fait le point sur la série d'œuvres présentée sur la place publique à Montréal par l'artiste photographe québécoise Marie-Jeanne Musiol. L'exposition est toujours visible sur les trois sites du Musée soit le Vieux-Port de Montréal (devant le Centre des sciences), le Marché Bonsecours (façade sud) et le Café Cherrier (façade nord). Ces sites accueillent sept images grand format de l'artiste.
Les photographies de Marie-Jeanne Musiol cherchent à restituer le caractère essentiel d'une réalité. Celle-ci peut prendre la forme d'un personnage : c'est le cas dans les photographies exposées au Marché Bonsecours et au Café Cherrier, où les personnages émergent des ténèbres dans une pose où rien ne vient distraire notre regard de ce qu'ils sont profondément. Cette réalité dont on ne garde que l'essentiel peut aussi prendre la forme d'un paysage, comme c'est le cas pour les œuvres exposées dans le Vieux-Port. La gravité de ces images nous saisit d'autant plus lorsqu'on apprend que ces photographies ont été prises dans les alentours d'un camp de concentration en Pologne, pays d'origine de l'artiste. Dans ces œuvres, la nature est devenue un témoin de l'histoire et des souffrances qui l'ont traversée.
La nouvelle publication du Musée d'art urbain permet de documenter une exposition qui, par son caractère à la fois sobre et saisissant, a ajouté une note singulière au paysage de l'art public à Montréal. Des photographies des sites, au fil des saisons, ainsi que des commentaires de l'artiste et une introduction de la commissaire, France Gascon, permettent de refaire le parcours proposé par les œuvres. Le catalogue de l'exposition, conçu par Kolégramdesign, a pu être réalisé grâce à une aide financière du Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec. L'exposition Silences a quant à elle bénéficié de la collaboration de la Collection Loto-Québec. Le Musée a également reçu pour cette exposition le soutien de la Société du Vieux-Port de Montréal, du Marché Bonsecours, du Service de la culture de la Ville de Montréal, du Café Cherrier, de Michel Dallaire Design, d'Enseicom ainsi que de GHQ Québec.