Claudie Gagnon — Incantations of light

by Galadriel Avon

Galadriel Avon is an independent author and curator as well as the editorial director of Vie des arts. She works in the peripheral regions of Mont-Saint-Hilaire and Kamouraska, Quebec.

National Bank Private Banking 1859 is proud to present the work of Claudie Gagnon at Plural 2024.

Claudie Gagnon works with transparency and finesse. In an almost alchemical manner, she has been developing large chandelier-like devices for several years: using translucent materials, they exploit the effects of light that are welcomed, voluntarily or involuntarily, into the various exhibition spaces that house them.

A multitude of found objects make up her suspensions. Some are taken from old laboratory glassware, others are simply gleaned. They are, in turn, test and chemistry tubes, burettes, balloons; cups, spectacle lenses, blown glass shards, bottles - all blending with the crystalline sparkle of old treasures, often broken, assembled by the artist. In the studio, a filing system controls their accumulation. Here, Gagnon creates categories that she will later bring together. In a similar way, she unearths and arranges supports that will dictate the shape and symmetry of her future pieces. A way of finding the extraordinary in the ordinary, her collecting brings her to a confluence of real material nuggets.

These mirage-like creations are the prisms of projections, magnification or shrinkage effects – like a magnifying glass under the influence of a rotating light source – and interplays of mirrors. As the sun's rays caress their contours, the works change their appearance, capturing what their environment has to offer, until at times they become immaterial, ghostly and diaphanous. Artificial lighting, used in certain specific contexts, also enhances volumes and amplifies details. If the projects have the sporadic ability to disappear, they also possess the inexhaustible capacity to emit shimmering effects, each more varied than the last: depending on the air currents blowing over them, colors and reflections burst into space, sublimating the experience of their plastic qualities and of the place in which they stand. In this way, the pieces work alone and together, to move us.

Beyond the range of possibilities opened up by the materiality of these fragments, Gagnon is interested in the layers of life they carry within them. Their previous uses, the stories they have nurtured and those they will rewrite once reconditioned and revalued by her gesture are at the heart of her preoccupations. This way of envisioning the narrative of her pieces, which can only be achieved through the recuperation process from which the objects that make them up come from, is an integral part of the attention she pays to their amalgam of materials. These are the result of conscious, conscientious choices.

This interest, and that surrounding the possibilities of fortuity, also enables the artist to shift and play with tensions and polarities. It is the enchantment that arises in us when we receive her work that the artist subverts by introducing, sometimes in spite of herself, incidental elements into her projects. Certain insects encapsulated by the force of age in her old-fashioned test tubes, for example, provoke a form of aversion or repulsion that is completely at odds with the state of fascination provoked by the magnificence and preciousness of her hangings. They thus oscillate between the narrative of the object, a broader narrative – in this case, for instance, a questioning of wear and tear, of time – and the public's imagination, confronted with these successive symbols and meanings.

At Plural, fragile yet imposing suspensions by Claudie Gagnon will inhabit the bay window of the Grand Quai in Montreal's Old Port. We'll hoist them to the high ceilings, letting them fully embrace the open space, which we know is conducive to all kinds of shimmering. The pieces are crafted with patience and care. Be patient and attentive to the contemplative subtleties of their constitution, as you take in their conversations with tricks of light.

Claudie Gagnon is represented by Chiguer Art Contemporain.