ANDRÉ FOURNELLE, FRANTZ PATRICK HENRY
L’âme en exil
André Fournelle
Rogner les murs
Frantz Patrick Henry
CURATOR'S TEXT
The pairing of André Fournelle and Frantz Patrick Henry confers a conversation between two artists whose sculptural installations address issues of legacy, territory, memory, and migratory trajectories.
André Fournelle's work, L’âme en exil (2013), is an autobiographical installation that focuses on the artist's history. Born in England at the beginning of World War II in 1939, Fournelle was adopted in Canada at the age of one, arriving on the shores of Nova Scotia through a Red Cross initiative. L’âme en exil presents the story of that arrival: while two ships left the shores of England, only one made it to Halifax, the other having sunk during the Atlantic crossing. The work features a black granite plaque, a grave marker with five guns on it, representing the five distress guns that are fired when a ship sinks. The sculpture of a boat, forged in steel, is filled with salt, depicting the ocean they crossed. In the background of the installation there is a red cross, the British flag with an image of a sinking ship, and an “X” made out of barbed wire. As much as L’âme en exil embodies an autobiographical narrative, it is also an installation about grief, about the devastating nature of war, and a tribute to those whose lives and deaths have never been honored.
Frantz Patrick Henry's Rogner les murs (2021) is an installation that is also about memory and history. The installation is a narrative that speaks of displacement, metamorphosis and regeneration. Henry arrived in Montreal in 2011 following the earthquake that afflicted Haiti in 2010. In Rogner les murs, the artist constructs a fabulated cartography to honor the narratives that are internal to us and puts them in dialogue with the imaginary of the territories. In the materials Henry uses, we find inlaid cartographies of Port-au-Prince’s neighborhoods where he is originally from, and those of Montreal where he now lives. Scattered throughout the installation are human body parts and everyday objects, such as those found in the debris after the earthquake. Brick, as a building material used in the installation, brings us to question what the reconstruction of the individual and collective self looks like in the face of trauma and displacement.
The dialogue between the practices of André Fournelle and Frantz Patrick Henry encourages us to reflect on the past, to honor lost narratives, and to ask what has been lost in order to allow for the construction of the present and the future. Their works, both autobiographical and fabricated, act as records of history and memory. The architectural and immersive nature of their works also allows us to develop our own narratives, as multiple as they may be, in the interaction of our bodies and our feelings in relation to the very space of their installations.
Photo: Michel Rico
ANDRÉ FOURNELLE - BIOGRAPHY
(he)
Born in the United Kingdom, André Fournelle was adopted in Canada at the age of one. Now a professional sculptor in Quebec, he studied sculpture through workshops in the United States, in Italy, in Belgium, in France and in Germany. Straying away from the institutional settings of art education, he learned his craft through lectures, research and experimentation.
Since the 1960s, Fournelle exhibited his art multiple times in Quebec, but also in Canada and in the rest of the world. From 1968 to 1974, he taught a sculpture class at the University of Ottawa. He created multiple pieces that integrated art and architecture, like Un moment vivant (2000), produced for the Taipei airport in Taiwan. He also created outdoor installations, like Spirale (1989), produced in honor of Robert Smithson and exhibited in the Death Valley in California.
Fournelle’s approach centers around light: the light of a fire, of neon lights, of metal fusing. He creates signs and acts symbolically. His artworks evoke uprootedness and the passage of time. From these emerge a true poetry, and a mystical and geopoetic inspiration. In the conception, the orientation and the creation of his art pieces, he considers the space, the environment and relevant themes. His work is a fusion of multiple sources of inspiration, notably natural elements (water, earth, air and fire) and pure geometric shapes.
Photo: Camille Dubuc
FRANTZ PATRICK HENRY - BIOGRAPHY
(he)
Frantz Patrick Henry a Haitian artist, based in Montreal since 2011.
After graduating from the University of Quebec in Montreal in 2019, he received the McAbbie Foundation Sculpture Excellence Grant from the School of Visual and Media Arts (UQAM) for his installation titled Je suis nouveau ici (2020).
As a multidisciplinary artist who has experienced many life changes and transitions, Henry is interested in the idea of becoming. His multidisciplinary practice comprises sculpture, painting, installation, photography and animation. The artist uses construction materials as a metaphor for the idea of using what is in constant undoing, as is the self.
By appropriating everyday objects deflected from their purpose, Henry’s artworks often take the form of a space, or location, thus inviting the spectator to experience the work through the lens of social geography. Painting and sculpture are used for reinventing and relating, paradoxical conditions for a permanence and renewal of the self.
Active in the Montreal art scene, Henry is involved in artist-run centers such as DARE DARE, where he sits on the Board of Directors, and the Clark Centre.