Barques 1992

in illo tempore — Expression, centre d’exposition de Saint-Hyacinthe, Quebec, Canada — Duo exhibition with Lyn Carter — Musée régional de la Côte-Nord, Sept-Îles, Québec, Canada — Exhibition with Pnina Gagnon and Gilles Morissette — Large boat : metallic structure, wood clayons covered woth shredded denim — H. 150 x L.700 x W 140 cm. Small boats : pigmented stone powder on tarlatan — L. 3 to 35 cm.

Between Icon & Index

 (…) “As evocative as it may be, this material which sometimes suggests algae or moss, is not the only key to the fascination of this great work. What is intriguing here, is the sum total of gestures which has gone into the making of the boat. Last February, in St-Hyacinthe, when I saw Michelle Héon’s boat for the first time, it was accompanied by a thousand smaller boats much like the ones we used to fabricate in school by folding paper – in a way, the origami of our occidental culture. What was most striking in Héon’s boats was the very impressive number of gestures displayed in the work. Once more, the work offered two messages. One figurative message : here is a boat ; here are a thousand other boats positioned on the ground like so many small waves upon the sea. In the same instance, of equal presence, an indication of enactment. The latter, the result of a million gestures, patiently repeated one after another, functioned as micro-structures perfectly in tune with the dialogue of the larger boat and contributing to its sence of colossal scale both in sight and in memory.

Michelle Héon brings us to an understanding of something essential. Her process in itself, also a work of art, is related to a series of repeated gestures with occasional variations and yet there is a consistent measure of similitude throughout. Like the shadow traces pursued by Pnina Gagnon, Michelle Héon’s shredding of fabric, he piece-by-piece immersion of the boats’s wooden armatur into the pulp-filled vat and her folding of boat forms, are much repeated gestures analogous to the sort of diagonal rhythmic rain Cezanne’s brush left when he painted his apples or his maid sitting of a stool. At this stage of making, and at this initial gestural level, the configuration or representation of Héon’s work has not yet appeared. The material and process has not yet been transcended by the artist’s vision. The work simply exists as a trace of an activity ; it is a witness of the artist’s presence ; it is a remnant of her passage; it is anything but an image or a recognizable form. Just as smoke is the sign of fire, without carrying any shared visual appearance. Héon’s work is the result of a gesture independant of any kind of convention which would make it a metaphor for the artist’s temperament.” (…)               

© François-Marc Gagnon (1935-2019) 1992, art historian, critic, writer and professor at Université de Montréal (1966-2000). Excerpt from the catalogue Entre l’icône et l’index, Musée régional de la Côte-Nord, Sept-Îles, Quebec, Canada.

1] Performing an appearance : on the surface of Abstract Expressionism, dans M. Auping and all., Abstract Expressionism, The Critical Developments, New York, Harry N. Abrahams, Inc. and Albright-Knox Art Gallery, 1987, p. 94 and all.