Guy Bourassa
Parades Parures
1999
Crédit photo : Marc Cramer, sans date
Presentation of the artwork
The artwork is composed of 14 boxes attached to the wall in two groups: one of ten boxes and one of four. The larger group is presented on the ground floor of the library, and the smaller group is in the basement, near the entrance to the children’s section. Each box, square in shape, has a wood frame. At the bottom is a piece of stretched coloured fabric on which is an aluminum plate into which a silhouette is cut out. A glass plate protects the grouping.Each box presents the portrait of a fictional character, and together the boxes make a group portrait. The fabrics act as landscapes. They place the characters in an organic environment, but also place the landscape within the characters, as the cut-outs form negative images.
“The issue in my practice is the representation of the other – or, rather, the projection of the other in a hollow. The artworks are presented a little like ‘portraits in absence,’ in which the formal constructions take up the space of the wall or the floor.”
– Guy Bourassa
Associated events
The artwork was created on the occasion of construction of the Bibliothèque de Rivière-des-Prairies.
Guy Bourassa
Guy Bourassa lives and works in Montréal. His works have been in a number of solo exhibitions as well as group exhibitions, including the Canadian Biennial of Contemporary Art at the National Gallery of Canada in 1989, and Anni noventa at the Galleria d’Arte Moderna in Bologna, Italy, in 1991. In addition, his works are in the Art Bank of the Canada Council for the Arts, the collection of the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, and many private collections.
