T.L. Morrisey

Showing posts with label sculpture. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sculpture. Show all posts

Friday, December 11, 2020

Resonances in Early December

Here we have Mathieu Gaudet's "Resonances" (2018) in early December, 2020. Photos taken 05 December 2020.






Quite spectacular! Quite beautiful!

Thursday, September 24, 2020

Resonances (2018), sculpture by Mathieu Gaudet


Mathieu Gaudet's Resonances is located at Ecole Judith-Jasmin in the West End of Montreal. It is made of poured black concrete; the sculpture is a wave, it can be any type of wave; for instance,  "resonance" is defined as

. . . the phenomenon of increased amplitude that occurs when the frequency of a periodically applied force (or a Fourier component of it) is equal or close to a natural frequency of the system on which it acts.

But "resonances" also suggests something different, it is to "resonate", to identify with something, or

to have particular meaning or importance for someone : to affect or appeal to someone in a personal or emotional way. 

And one resonates with this sculpture, perhaps one thinks of a beach and waves approaching where one is sitting, or it might suggest a metaphysical perception of life and open the viewer to new ideas. 

Resonances works on different levels of meaning. As an object it is utilitarian, it is a partition separating the entrance to the new building from the larger green area of the older building to which it is attached. I think the sculpture gives the entrance a feeling of privacy and intimacy; the entrance to the new building is secluded, the ornamental grass giving it a feeling of solitude, of being in nature. It is a wave, showing how a new idea may begin with a single thought and then grow into something much larger and more profound. 

Another level of meaning is metaphysical, the sculpture is a long black object, black and in some ways forbidding, but also elegant. You have two elements at work here, water and earth, and they are often considered in opposition to each other. A wave is always changing and this wave changes as sunlight plays off of it. The shadow of the sculpture, black like the sculpture, is a second wave, and both are impermanent, temporal, subject to either the long term change of material deteriorating or to the short term way sunlight changes one's perception of something. In either case, change is always present, whether short or long term.








 





Saturday, July 18, 2020

New Sculpture on Loyola Campus

The science hub, the new building on the Loyola Campus of Concordia University, includes a recently installed sculpture. I don't know the artist's name or what the sculpture is called (it hasn't been announced), but it is quite imposing and you get an idea of what it might mean when you approach it from a distance. It looks like a "rough beast", almost an invisible man not wrapped in gauze but in striations of aluminum. This is a formidable sculpture, as though an amorphous human body, one arm bent and protruding from the body making it look like it is slouching towards something; standing beside the sculpture it doesn't seem to be anything but a formless mass. I don't see any celebration of science in this sculpture assuming there should be considering it is located between two science buildings (literal me), it is more of a dystopian impression of the new soulless human being that has been manifesting for the last hundred years or so. The sculpture is hollow so you can step inside and looking up you see the blue sky, windows of the new building, and the endless and infinite universe over one's head. These shapes above one's head remind me of work done by Hans Arp, if I remember correctly. The sculpture is actually a very perceptive and accurate image of an aspect of our new world order, one that is both disturbing and disconcerting.

Now I remember what the sculpture reminds me of, it is the Golem from Jewish mythology; this seems appropriate considering the age in which we live. 

And now (09 October 2020) I know the artist's name, it is Marc-Antoine Cote.