Ainsi passe la gloire du monde, redux

OPENING: Thursday, March 26, from 5:30 p.m.

ABOUT THE EXHIBITION

CIRCA art actuel presents Ainsi passe la gloire du monde, redux by artist Claudie Gagnon: a monumental sculptural still life. This complex piece has been presented in various versions, and this is the most ambitious one, with its 18-foot-long black-draped table on which glassware, books, food, jewellery, antique objects, insects and curiosities are laid out.

The title comes from the Latin phrase Sic transit gloria mundi, associated with Memento Mori, still-life paintings whose contents evoke the death of all living species. Seventeenth-century Dutch painters in particular produced many still lifes evoking the passage of time by carefully depicting luxurious objects and exotic plants.

Claudie Gagnon’s installation respects the codes of the still life. That said, the artist manages to draw narrative connections with worlds usually foreign to the genre, such as those of fairy tales, haunted houses or psychological thrillers. With each new iteration, her work is filled with new elements the artist has found in the city hosting the installation. The wealth of references created by the quality of the chosen objects and their unexpected associations gives the work a singular strength, with a narrative potential that seems limitless.

It is to the ticking of clocks that we first get a view of the work. Our gaze sweeps over it from end to end and takes in, one after another, the suspended elements, the objects balanced in place and the many mounds. At the far end rises a one-way mirror that extends the table and everything on it with a faded reflection. […]

– Excerpt from the text by Geneviève Goyer-Ouimette

About the artist

Originally from Montréal, Claudie Gagnon is a self-taught multidisciplinary artist who lives and works in Quebec City. Active for more than thirty years, she works across installation, tableau vivant, sculpture, video, photography, food art, collage, multidisciplinary creation and art integrated into architecture. Her work was presented at the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal as part of the second Triennial, where she received the audience favourite award. She also presented Le Banquet there, a large edible installation created in collaboration with chef Pierre Normand, and took part in the group exhibition En verre, sous verre et sans verre. She held the CALQ studio-residency in Paris and took part in a creative residency in Mexico City, resulting from the agreement between the CALQ and the Fondo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes.

About the author

Geneviève Goyer-Ouimette is an independent curator and Curator of the City of Laval’s art collection. She was previously curator of the Collection Prêt d’œuvres d’art at the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, director of CIRCA art actuel, and Gail and Stephen A. Jarislowsky Curator of Quebec and Canadian Contemporary Art (1945 to the present) at the Montréal Museum of Fine Arts. As a curator, she has produced several exhibitions, including surveys of Catherine Bolduc (Salle Alfred-Pellan and Expression) and Éric Ladouceur (Musée du MacLau and Galerie Graff), the first edition of Projet HoMa (Fondation Guido Molinari and Maison de la culture Maisonneuve), Mnémosyne: quand l’art contemporain rencontre l’art du passé (MMFA) and four editions of Zoom Art, a contemporary art display project in the advertising spaces of Laval’s metro stations, in which Claudie Gagnon took part in the Réalisme magique edition. She also publishes essays in art catalogues and journals. Involved in the art community, she is an active member of Est-Nord-Est, the artist residency in Saint-Jean-Port-Joli, an honorary member of CIRCA art actuel, and sits on the steering committee of the Galerie de l’Université de Montréal. She holds degrees in art history (UQAM), museology (UQAM) and cultural organization management (HEC Montréal).