Maude Arès. L’algue flotte dans une rivière, amenée par le débit de l’eau, elle s’agrippe à la pierre, elle y reste longtemps
Graduating Master’s student in Visual and Media Arts, UQAM
Artist: Maude Arès
May 17, 2019 - June 22, 2019
Opening: May 16, 2019, 5:30 pm
Galerie de l’UQAM concludes its 2018-2019 programming with an exhibition by Maude Arès, L’algue flotte dans une rivière, amenée par le débit de l’eau, elle s’agrippe à la pierre, elle y reste longtemps. Through a sensitive installation, the artist explores the stories and vulnerabilities of found materials.
THE EXHIBITION
Algae float in a river, carried by the water’s flow. Algae attach themselves to a rock and stay there for a long while.
Long enough for the surfaces of the algae and the surface of the rock to fuse. Algae become rock. An engraving through accumulation. This rock is the one that grew in my hand. It sits there, neither harming nor helping me. I consider it. Just before closing my fist around it, I touch it with the flesh of my thumb.
Maude Arès moves through collection, recuperation and resetting things in motion. Archiving debris from the past five years, she has found compelling the trajectories and histories of shock and usage—real and imagined—inscribed into fragmented materials. Bringing attention to a material’s charge reveals the ways in which human and non-human movements and actions influence each other.
The installation stages a tiny universe made of found, broken objects and a series of precarious, willowy sculptures called mystery tools. Throughout the exhibition, Arès sets these small items in motion by balancing them and changing their location. The mystery tools become an extension of her body, allowing for the slow, perilous and coincidental manipulation of the materials on display. Sound artist Simon Labbé is also amplifying the objects’ delicate sounds. Breaking, wearing down, fusing and weaving; the focus is on the matter’s relationships, sound, movement and transformation. The creation of unsettled microcosms reveals a complex material world, constantly building itself.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Maude Arès is an interdisciplinary artist, working in installation, sculpture, performance, set design and drawing. Her practice explores the sensitive relationships between materials, often found and broken. She uses these objects to create vulnerable environments that invite us to listen, appreciate and understand the subtleties of the tangible world. The artist’s inquiry into the performance and gestures of matter is manifest through visual art, live art and design. Her personal work and collaborative creations have been presented in Montréal and Colombia, in artist-run centres and theatres (La Chapelle Scènes contemporaines, Tangente, Aux Écuries, Campos de Gutiérrez, Fondation Phi pour l’art contemporain, Espace Cercle carrée, Espace Projet, Centre de design) and at events (OFFTA, Nuit Blanche à Montréal, Chromatic, OUF ! – Festival Off Casteliers). Since 2014, she collaborates regularly with the collective projets hybris. maudeares.com
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