Pierre Bourgault

JENESAISPASVRAIMENTOUJEVAISMAISJEMENVAIS
01.19–02.25.2012
Room 1

Paradoxically, the experience of a shared geographical place was here approached from the viewpoint of the intimate in the context of an exhibition project planned for a space, which though considered as private, is actually programmed within a social perspective.

This first part of the project presented the experience of a frenzied flight beyond a static space, wherein a rigid comfort provided one with a certain sense of vertigo, an instinctive interest in the unknown, and this by organizing a perpetual and risk-ridden migration fraught with dangers: the possibility of imploding into the infinite, of the disappearance of one’s cultural markers, or even that of an historical amnesia. To rush forward for the sole sensation of speed as the wind strokes the skin. Vertigo is everywhere in this work where it draws out a nervous migration by constantly overpowering the signposts of the real and unreal.

Mechanical and Disorienting Perceptions

Jenesaispasvraimentoujevaismaisjemenvais (2011), even the title, which can be read in a single breath, has a momentum of its own. This work, which drifts and opens onto an elsewhere, condenses ideas that are dear to Pierre Bourgault, the Quebecois artist who is notably well known for his public art sculptures, which render Inuit string game motives in three dimensions. For quite some time, Bourgault has taken inspiration from his sailing experience to create works that translate his relationship to space and time through the use of systems, these languages devised by human beings to understand, control, and mark their environment. After ephemeral drawings on water which make the effects of ocean currents visible, translations of ship routes depicted in pseudo abstract drawings in which the line appears to have a meaning that goes beyond itself, salt towers washed away by the elements, sculptural works which incorporate proxemics, i.e. the manner in which people use space, and soundscapes which evoke echolocation, this new work by Bourgault touches on many of his concerns and invites us to poetically reflect on the individual’s capacity to adapt to a new living environment.

Consisting of hundreds of drawings covering the gallery’s main room, a capsule suspended over a pool of water, and a mysteriously poetic soundtrack, this new installation presented at CLARK appears to promise an experience and not just something to gaze upon. Indeed, though visitors may approach the cartographic images pinned to the wall in order to grasp their organizing principle, they will literally have to plunge into the water if they wish to enter the capsule, which can only receive one visitor at a time. Halfway between a scale model zeppelin and submarine, the soft green, molded fiberglass passenger compartment seems uncertain of its function— as both shelter or cocoon, and protective survival capsule, it is only suitable for a temporary stay. Equipped with an apparatus emitting chirping sounds through a hazy audio filter, the craft reserves an unsettling sensation for visitors, whose senses will be disoriented for the duration of one push off. Rudderless, it can but instill the reverie of someone adrift, something that the echo, rolling, and mirroring of the vessel in the water is bound to reinforce.

Because Bourgault has accustomed us to works made out of organic material—wood, salt—the lifespan of which can be measured in terms of a more subjective, sensed time, the quasi futurist aspect of this installation is quite surprising. Cradled within it, swaying to the rhythms of melodies of uncertain sonorities, the pseudo natural accents of which unexpectedly betray their digital source, visitors will perhaps imagine themselves on a journey to the unknown, in search of a primordial and untouched land.