Rewind: Patrick Coutu
Galerie René Blouin, Montreal
Patrick Coutu's exhibition featured two distinct approaches to the notion of building. One could be found in an untitled concrete cityscape, Sans titre (2002–04), and the other in a series of concrete stalagmite forms, each entitled Flèche (2004). When the artist has talked about his work, the phrase "in formation" comes up repeatedly. These works all spoke to the idea of the additive process of building, accumulating and constructing.
Sans titre is like a large toy town made of building blocks. It mimics the cliché features of the urban landscape, such as high-rises, highways, factories and single-family dwellings. Made from an even-tone concrete and set onto a base of the same, the work falls visually within the formalist tradition of the monochrome. Adding colour would have been too dynamic, lending the work a narrative potential. There is no sense of what's happening here. The piece is a freeze-frame, a city stopped. What's not clear is how, why or when. The work sits in stasis, a relic of an obsessive preoccupation with making. It becomes furniture, a thing in the room, a table with stuff on it. We could talk about it in terms of architecture but, beyond its visual language, I don't think that's what it's about.
The Flèche are made from concrete droppings, each form an amalgamation of tiny blobs that ultimately becomes a phallus that rises up off the floor, then stops. Other writers have made connections between this work and Alberto Giacometti but, beyond the fact that the sculptures are tall and skinny, there's no relationship. Giacometti was about moving into the centre of the form, like an explosion in reverse, whereas Coutu reaches up and out. However, the comparison is useful, because it brings up the question of when a work terminates. Giacometti's works seem to be in a perpetual state of imploding, creating a sense of mass whereby everything is being drawn into the core. Coutu, on the other hand, makes a decision to stop adding. Why? I think of Constantin Brancusi's endless columns and how, even though they are of a finite height, they still make us think of infinity.
This show is beautifully conceived and executed. Coutu's command of materials is more than convincing. I am left with many questions about the art, but none are negative. The work simply works. It makes me think, and I will continue to think while waiting to see what Patrick Coutu does next after building a city.
Winter 2004
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