Jean-Pierre Morin
Artist Statement
My work is based in correspondences between the organic world and that of geometry. It articulates itself both in the context of public art commissions and gallery exhibitions. Human-scale or monumental, my sculptures are made of metal – often aluminum – and directly inspired by effects of light and forms in nature.
Often preceded by a preliminary phase in which I explore new forms through drawing, my sculptural practice gives shape to exoskeletons that display unusual volumes.
Beyond traditional understandings of sculpture that focus on mass, form, construction, and structure, my works are monumental identities, often arising out of a formal poetry. At times deceptive in appearance, they subvert conventions and play with paradox. Between weightlessness and gravity, balance and instability, full and empty, I open the way for the unexpected.
Artist Bio
The sculptor Jean-Pierre Morin has acquired, in Quebec and abroad, incontestable fame over the last decades, his work being requested and presented in galleries and international contemporary art fairs, as well as through public and private commissions allowing his work to be integrated into more than thirty well-known public sites.
Jean-Pierre Morin’s sculptures speak to us of the materials and their possibilities. They also tell us about nature, space and man’s relationship with these elements: flames, leaves, flashes of lightening, stars, arborescence. Jean-Pierre Morin’s sculptural work has always been inspired by the elements of nature. Furthermore, his art is impregnated with the natural character of the elements through their form, color and seismic energy. His approach is based on the formal, poetic study of a telluric dimension of nature’s manifestations and their ontological resonance.
Always present in every stage of creation and production of his sculptures, Jean-Pierre Morin cultivates an aesthetics which integrates as many techniques of which it lets nothing show: hence the virtuosity in the sculptural treatment. Materials such as aluminum, steel or cor-ten steel are sometimes welded, corroded, burned or perforated to bring out their properties. The sculptor magnifies the presence and qualities of each material under the effect of a tension or repose of forms: this paradox participates in the tellurian mechanism.
Jean-Pierre Morin has participated in numerous individual and group exhibitions, in Montreal, Quebec City, Edmonton, Toronto, New York, Los Angeles, Dallas, Denver, Miami, Paris, Cologne and Madrid.
His works belong to many private and public collections in Canada, including those of the Canada Council Art Bank, the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, the loan collection of the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, the Musée du Bas Saint-Laurent, the Musée régional de Rimouski, the Musée de Joliette, the National Bank of Canada and the Loto-Quebec collection.
