Look at me! I’m talking to you!
The 2nd Festival
« Recycl’Art » opens Saturday, August 27th, at 2 p.m., at the Regional
Contemporary Art Center of Montpellier. Some of the 38 participating
sculptors are from the Laurentians and the Argenteuil region in
particular. Diana Boulay, of Brownsburg-Chatham, who just concluded an
exhibit at the centre, will also participate with two of her
installations. Diana is an artist who thrives on creating beautiful
installations with non-biodegradable cast-offs.
Diana’s
12-column installation, shows her style of assembling plastic objects of
gradual changing tones of the same colour. Each grouping is encased in
Plexiglas. The columns tower over us, displaying the debris we
accumulate.
Not
all of Diana’s installations are monochromatic. Some are made of a
cheerful even playful array of colours, such as the seemingly innocent
looking installation entitled “Hors d'oeuvres in Galorica”. A
city-landscape made of colourful cocktail picks, cutting guides, spoons
and circles. There is light emanating from the city, yet there are also
chemical fallouts over the city.
Another
colourful work completed in 2005, is “Faces”. It
represents our times, with a myriad of cast-away doll faces,
tightly imprisoned in a Plexiglas box. Cartoon, children story
characters, and skeletons, thrown together, no place to hide...doomed,
humans squeezed by their own discards, or by the powers to be. It is so
colourful and cheerful that one is drawn to look at it....then the mind
starts working.
Diana’s
piece J’te parle is a woman's body made of fridge racks,
parts of a fan and other chrome found pieces. The pieces of this
installation are hooked onto each other, without being affixed. The
mouth is made of a Slinky and so are the woman's breasts. These parts
are moving constantly with just the breeze from the window. Diana says
that it represents her. She talks to us about the multitude of
throw-away objects that scatter our world. Diana stands there and tells
us "Listen to me! I am talking to you!"
Many of Diana's installations are
whimsical yet, deliver a very serious message. For years, Diana
accumulated a great deal of refuse. She says: “I never threw anything
away.” From paper clips, to strawberry containers, to bottles, to
broken toys, to metal and wood pieces. She separates the objects by
colour and material, then creates beauty from garbage. Sometimes she
starts putting things together and the image gradually appears. She
just lets herself go. She told me that in art school at UQAM (BFA
1981), they called her the "Garbage Alchemist". Diana Boulay exhibited
in Canada and the United States. Her work was reviewed by several art
magazines, including Art in America.
It would be a worthwhile trip to see what
our sculptors do with recycled material at the “Centre
régional d’art contemporain de Montpellier” : 19, rue Principale,
Montpellier
Open Wednesday to Sunday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Tel.: (819) 423-6257 e-mail:
ch2o@sympatico.ca,
website:
http://cf.geocities.com/cracmontpellier.
