biography

Born in Matane, Canada. Lives and works in Montreal, Canada.

Originally from Matane, Jean-Pierre Gauthier lives and works in Montreal. His work has been exhibited in Canada, Europe, and Asia, and was the subject of a retrospective at the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal in 2007. In 2004, he won the Sobey Art Prize, and in 2005, the Canada Council for the Arts selected him as winner of the Victor-Martyn-Lynch-Staunton Award.

Public Art

Porte Saint-Jean

La pelle du printemps, 2022, sculpture sonore interactive.

La pelle du printemps is an interactive sculpture that builds and grows, branching into multiple offshoots, a metal and plastic tree clashing with the landscape. Snow shovels and their handles are fragmented and reconfigured into this peculiar arborescence that reaches out to beckon passers-by, inviting them to play. A turn of the shovel-handle cranks produces a chirruping sound, a simulated birdcall urging spring to return. Once again, Gauthier blurs the line between the manufactured and the natural.

Work produced in collaboration with Avatar.

Manif d’art would like to thank Parks Canada.