Amélie Proulx: Les eaux composées, 2020
Les eaux composées presents a series a nine low-relief tondos made of ceramics. The installation unfolds across the intervention wall facing the waiting room of the new MRI department at the Hôpital de Montmagny. Each tondo is framed with an aluminum ring, cut to follow the relief of the ceramic piece. Each relief was created with 3D-modelling software to represent a patch of moving water from the St. Lawrence River. Through different technological manipulations, this material, evoking fluidity and the passage of time, was fixed in the ceramic material. A glossy and transparent glaze was used on each tondo, with the amount of pigment varying in order to evoke different possible colours of water, from a light blue to a deep blue-green. The glossiness and transparency of the glaze evoke especially the fluidity of water and also accentuate the reliefs and textures of each tondo.
Oscillating between the near and the far, the inside and the outside, the installation opens onto a horizon that, perhaps paradoxically, is apprehended in an intimate relationship with the landscape. This installation thus evokes the possible movements of a fluid material fixed in time, as if fragments of waves had been extracted from the St. Lawrence River and fossilized in the ceramic material.
Les eaux composées, 2020, ceramics, glaze, painted aluminum, hardware, 9 tondos of 21 inches in diameter each, photo credit: Étienne Dionne