Transvasements

Saturday, September 30, 2023, 5 p.m.
Galerie Art Mûr invites the public to attend a live musical performance by the group MOAB as part of the exhibition Transvasements by artist Patrick Beaulieu. The soundtrack for the video work Transvasements comes from a “psychedelic” recording session by the group MOAB, made during the night of April 3 at studio presqu’île in Montreal.
In collaboration with Boldwin beers, and Galeries Weekend Montréal.

Text by Marsha Taichman

Patrick Beaulieu has a keen sense of wonder coupled with a willingness to go on adventures. He let nature lead his travels, recording and bringing back objects, imagery and ephemera that is the basis of his art. The works are site-specific, and the way they alter and interact with the surroundings is often beyond the artist’s control. There is a focus on and fascination with the migratory, the meteorological, and the spiritual, all elusive phenomena that surround us. Mobility is a recurrent theme in Beaulieu’s work, and how objects move through time, both disrupting and engaging with space.

Art Mûr brings together photographs, videos, installations, and artefacts that culminated from Beaulieu’s recent project Transvasements. The premise of this work is in some ways simple: it is the story of a small boat, where it came from and where it went. In Transvasements, the poetic intention of returning a boat to its place of origin is a performative way of observing and experiencing time. As the artist describes, this is a project that “observes and evokes time as it flows, gets lost, sometimes stops, and then resumes its course.” Beaulieu built a cabin inside a boat and installed a suspension system to accommodate a hammock that can be used as a makeshift bed. He then sailed from the Gironde estuary to Sète on a canal that links the Atlantic to the Mediterranean for 35 days. The work was in a state of being made and remade as Beaulieu travelled in the boat, which weathered with time and the elements. Once a mode of transportation, the boat is now rendered still in the gallery space, as an installation and a reminder of this performative excursion. Pieces of wood and diverse elements recollected along the artist’s journey are propped up like minimalist sculptures around the gallery, resembling the diverse parts of an easel.

Boundaries and boundlessness are important considerations in this body of work. What purpose do borders serve? What are the social and geographic boundaries that these works align and collide with? What is factual, what is fiction? Wherein lies the art, with the vehicle, the evidence, or both? Beaulieu might argue that the journey is the important part of what he accomplished in these inventive, personal travels.