The art is in the mailHull, Quebec, February 17, 2000 — The Canadian Postal Museum (CPM) opens three new exhibitions today. Postal art is the theme of Fluorescence, an art installation by well-known Montreal artist Pierre Bruneau constructed with mail bags, and of The State of Time: The Millennium Stamps, an intimate installation of more than two hundred stamps created by artists, based on an original idea by Richard Purdy from the Atelier de l'Île in Val-David, Quebec. As well, the CPM's Collector's Corner presents Twin Stamps, a collection of first-day issues belonging to Pascal LeBlond.
Fluorescence
February 17 to June 6, 2000 — Pitney Bowes Art Gallery
"Each bag in this exhibition holds an envelope that the artist himself addressed and mailed, and sealed within the envelope is the document that sparked the work of art that carries it."
Jennifer Couëlle
Montreal artist Pierre Bruneau has created several series of phosphorescent works: Mail Bags (1992–96), Things We Look For (1993–94) and Portraits of Lost Friends (1993–96). They have been shown at the Galerie Yves Leroux in Montreal, as well as in Paris and Chicago. Since 1982 Bruneau has had an impressive number of group and solo shows and has been the recipient of numerous grants, including awards from the Canada Council for the Arts, the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec and the French ministry of culture.
The works of Pierre Bruneau invite spectators to participate in light-filled, playful poetry. In Fluorescence, he gives new life to mail bags, which become canvases suspended like festive banners.
When we examine these works more closely, we discern a shadow or silhouette. This imagery, painted in pale phosphorescent pigment, is an evocation of everyday reality. The art is nourished by light, but also by time, which is an essential dimension of the works. In each bag, souvenirs of the past, collected in an envelope, bear witness to the origins of the work of art, its history and its evolution.
The State of Time: The Millennium Stamps
February 17 to March 26, 2000
Three years ago the Atelier de l'Île, in collaboration with multidisciplinary artist Richard Purdy, launched an international call to artists to create an original stamp as a reflection on the passage into the next millennium.
Presented as an intimate installation, the exhibition assembles more than two hundred stamps created in a variety of techniques by a hundred artists from more than eleven countries (including Canada, the United States, England, France, Chile, Italy and Finland). Poetic, political, symbolic and playful, the assembled stamps celebrate, challenge and lend meaning to this passage in time that has been the subject of spectacular media hype. The installation is divided into four distinct scenes, each with a table or desk recalling a different era. Visitors can settle into a chair at each station to admire the stamps arranged in albums. Each section also features a glass case displaying stamps that seem to float in water, symbolizing an ocean crossing, a journey overseas or new frontiers.
Since 1978, the Atelier de l'Île, located in Val-David in the Laurentians, has been devoted to research, creation and production in contemporary printmaking and related multidisciplinary practices. More than three hundred artists from around the world have created more than two thousand works there.
Twin Stamps
February 17 to June 2000
Pascal LeBlond, research consultant and member of the American First Day Cover Society, has been collecting first-day issues for twenty-five years. Ever since his mother first introduced him to the world of postage stamps, he has focused on first-day issues, thus collecting both the stamp and the first-day cancellation. The exhibition presents a selection of first-day issues produced on the occasion of joint issues by two or more postal administrations. The interest of these joint issues is that the stamps are presented on a single document and stamped with their respective first-day cancellations, some of which are extremely rare.
The Canadian Postal Museum was officially opened at the Canadian Museum of Civilization in Hull, Quebec in June 1997 and will receive its millionth visitor before the end of February 2000.
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