MMFA 2017: Claude Cormier TOM IV

CLAUDE CORMIER

Flower Power - TOM IV

Summer-Fall 2017

This installation was designed at the request of the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts and realized with the support of the Ville de Montréal - City of Montreal. It celebrates the city’s 375th birthday, as well as the 50th anniversary of EXPO 67.

On Montreal's Du Musée Avenue, the TOMs in their 10 different colours radiate like a shower of sparks in a night's fireworks display, and the tangle of circular motives with their separate hues blending into each other reflect the psychedelic spirit of the 1960s.

This work consists of 15,000 temporary overlay markers (TOM) that are regularly used in road-pavement work zones.

This is the 4th work by Claude Cormier exhibited in the Montreal Museum of Fine Art's Sculpture Garden. Read about his previous MMFA installations:

• MMFA 2012-2013: Carpet of Daisies - TOM I & Field of Poppies -TOM II here.
• MMFA 2014: Mirage - TOM III here.

Click on images to enlarge them.

For more information about the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts exhibitions and activities, visit the museum's website.

All photos @ Nadia Slejskova

MMFA 2014: Claude Cormier's Mirage

Claude Cormier 

Mirage – TOM III

Summer 2014

This summer, once again, the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (MMFA) is presenting an outside installation by the Quebec artist and landscape architect Claude Cormier. The installation is a part of the museum’s outdoor sculpture garden. It actually connects and unifies the two sections of the Sculpture Garden that run along the side walks on both sides of the Du Musée Avenue, and which are otherwise separated by the street traffic and cars.

Located at the heart of the Quartier du Musée, the Sculpture Garden has been turned into a pedestrian mall for the third summer in a row. After his previous works at MMFA Carpet of Daisies – TOM I (in 2012) and Field of Poppies – TOM II (in 2013), this Cormier's third instalment in the TOM series, Mirage, has been designed to give visitors and passers-bys an original visual experience.

The installation not only presents a striking visual design of geometrical forms, it also consists of totally different colour schemes in either an upward or downward street direction. In the photos above, looking up the street, the colours are blue, black, yellow and white. But in the downward direction, in the photos below, the colours are dark and light red, as well as white and yellow. One can notice that two colours are present in both colour schemes - white and yellow, which seem to unite them into one whole.

The changing pallet of colours and designs provide a striking visual effect as well as varying points of view and perspectives as one walks up or down the museum's Sculpture Garden.

This year, for the third edition of TOM, a record number of 10,000 overlay temporary markers were used, three times the number of those used in the very first Claude Cormie’s TOM installation in 2012.

See the photos and read the articles on previous and subsequent TOM installations by Calude Cormire at MMFA:

• MMFA 2012-2013: Carpet of Daisies - TOM I & Field of Poppies -TOM II here.
• MMFA 2017: Flower Power - TOM IV  here.

Click on images to enlarge them.

Claude Cormier in the spotlight at the MMFA

Montreal Museum of Fine Arts
Sculpture Garden

MMFA: May-October 2013
Field of Poppies - TOM II

Claude Cormier is an internationally renowned Quebec landscape artist, an architect and urban designer. His work, entitled Field of Poppies - TOM II, is installed in the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts' Sculpture Garden on Du Musée Avenue. Located at the heart of the Museum complex, the Sculpture Garden features twenty-three works by Quebec, Canadian and international artists. It is one of the largest collections of public art in the city. The section of Du Musée Avenue bordering the Sculpture Garden has been transformed into a pedestrian mall until October.

This year, to celebrate this public space created at the heart of the Quartier du Musée, the MMFA and the Ville de Montréal asked Claude Cormier to create another temporary work. Field of Poppies - TOM II is composed of 5,060 red, green and white TOMs. The surprising optical effect, inspired by Claude Monet’s Poppy Field, transforms the avenue into a “field of flowers” where pedestrians are free to roam.

MMFA: May - October 2012
Carpet of Daises - TOM I

Previous year, in 2012, for several months Claude Cormier transformed a section of the asphalt on Du Musée Avenue into a carpet of daisies, as seen in the picture below. The work was called Carpet of Daises - TOM I. It was made of 3,500 temporary overlay markers (TOMs), which are raised markers that delineate temporary lanes on highways.

The markers were laid out as a regular grid, forming pointillist shifts between the yellow and the white. This  work created a strong chromatic link between the Museum’s separate pavilions.

For the subsequent editions of Claude Cormier's TOM installations visit these articles:

• MMFA 2014: Mirage - TOM III  here.
• MMFA 2017: Flower Power - TOM IV  here.

Click on images to enlarge them.