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FRANÇOIS MORELLI : HYPHENATION, BODY MEMORY
Exhibition and performance workshop at Skol : November 15th – December 15th, 2018.
Lecture at Artexte: November 28th, 5:30 p.m.
Closing event at Skol: December 15th, 2:00 p.m.
As François Morellli prepares to retire from his position of professor at Concordia University, Skol and Artexte wish to pay tribute to the pedagogical work of this leading figure of Action Art in Québec.
Through the presentation of a lecture and an exhibition-laboratory that echoes the notions of passage, movement, and transformation inherent in the artist’s work, this event underscores Morelli’s contributions to the Montreal arts community, while insisting on his vibrant artistic practice and his continued pedagogical practice beyond the institution.
Exhibition and performance workshop
As an artist and educator who has left his mark on the Montreal arts scene, Morelli has pursued a trans-disciplinary practice since 1976, incorporating drawing, installation, performance, printmaking and sculpture. At Skol, he creates an experimental space based on the fluidity of relations between process and dissemination as well as between his pedagogical and artistic approaches.
During his exhibition, Morelli gives a workshop to fifteen members of Skol. The workshop is part personal study and part group work. On weekdays, works produced by the group are exhibited at Skol. Every Saturday, all members of the group meet in the gallery and share the state of their research through drawing, in a session that is open to the public.
Conference at Artexte
Indeterminacy and Possibility: a dialogue between François and Didier Morelli
This evolving conversation between artists François Morelli (father) and Didier Morelli (son) will unfold around key subjects from François Morelli’s four-decade art career. While remaining faithful to a spirit of intergenerational collaboration and open in regard to their own personal relationship, father and son will revisit François Morelli’s artistic journey and seek to identify throughout it connections between art practice, living art, mobility, teaching and fatherhood.
Photo : Guy L’Heureux
François Morelli was born in Montréal in 1953 and married curator Diane Charbonneau in 1988. Their son, researcher and performance artist Didier Morelli, was born in 1989.
Morelli pursues a multifaceted approach (drawing, printmaking, installation, performance and sculpture) marked by a sustained interrogation of the object and its status within both the creative process and the perception of the artwork. He is interested in ideas of passage, circulation and transformation. For Morelli, the artwork is often the echo of a past action or intervention that aims to translate relationships (both in space and time) between the artist and society, between individuals, and between the individual and the object.*
* Pierre Landry L’origine des choses, 1994, Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal
François Morelli received his BFA in 1975 from Concordia University, where he developed conceptual strategies in drawing that led him to feed pigeons, document trees and interpret fly-paper, among other things. Between 1975 and 1981, he lived in Montréal, where he was one of the co-founders of Articule in 1979-80. In 1981, he taught at Université du Québec à Chicoutimi. From 1981 to 1991, he lived in the NYC area, and received an MFA in performance and installation from Rutgers’ Mason Gross School of the Arts, in New Brunswick, NJ in 1983. He taught at Rutgers from 1983 to 1990, and at CUNY and SUNY in Manhattan from 1985 to 1990. Upon returning to Québec in 1991, he taught at Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières until 1996. He has been a professor at Concordia University since 1996, where he is director of the DLD (drawing lab dessin) with Éric Simon since 2012. He was represented by Christiane Chassay from 1991 to 2004, and Joyce Yahouda since 2006. Morelli was awarded the Biennale de dessin et d’estampe d’Alma’s Prix d’Excellence in 1993, and the City of Montréal’s Prix Louis Comtois in 2007. His work has been presented in Canada and the US, as well as in Europe, Asia and South America.
Text by Anne-Marie Proulx
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