MOREAU, GRENIER FIND ART IN ARCHITECTURE
Aude Moreau and Nicolas Grenier are conceptual artists who use the forms and symbols of architecture to make social and political statements in the guise of great visual art.
They were recently honoured by the city of Montreal and the Contemporary Art Galleries Association. Moreau won the Prix Louis-Comtois for a mid-career artist, worth $10,000, and Grenier won the Prix Pierre-Ayot for an artist under 35, worth $7,500.
Both artists have international presences and are represented by Galerie Antoine Ertaskiran, where they will have shows in 2017. Moreau’s exhibition opens Jan. 19; Grenier’s is in the fall.
Moreau is working on a project that could result in the words Less Is More Or being written with office lights in the TD Centre complex in Toronto. Passersby will get different word combinations and meanings that will change with the vantage points around the five or six buildings that will be used.
It’s an update of a Modernist expression for a site designed by Mies van der Rohe, who is known for breaking the visual barriers between inside and outside. One example is to let interior lighting patterns continue to the exterior, which Moreau emulates with office lights seen through windows.
The project has been designed for an age in which every point of view is relative, according to Moreau. “It’s difficult to have a discussion when everything is relative,” she said.
And do the financial and legal people she deals with fear a negative interpretation of the ambiguous phrase in her project?
“It’s not about being negative,” Moreau said, “but wondering about where we are, and the questions we face.”
Grenier is more detailed with the architectural solutions to social ills he offers in paintings, videos and installations. The Vertically Integrated Socialism project he will present at Centre Clark in May proposes solutions for homelessness, particularly in Los Angeles, where he has a studio in an area with many homeless people. “Some of them are families who couldn’t pay their mortgage,” he said.
Grenier gives each social class room in the “vertically integrated” housing projects he designs. His aim, he said, is to make “hidden (social) structures visible.”
Each group is kept separated in architectural, economic and social environments that are closed and oppressive.
The irony is that his oppressive solutions are “still better than the current situation,” he said.
My wish for 2017: That it be the year when political messages from the art world — whether the subtle conceptualism of artists like Moreau and Grenier or the bombastic expressions of street artists — are seen by more and more people as helpful and inspirational in resisting the rise of anti-democratic forces.