Patrick Beaulieu

Signs of disorientation

2018

Patrick Beaulieu is a multidisciplinary artist. His projects are intrinsically linked to ideas of mobility, forming a relationship to various territories by empirically addressing the question of geographical and social boundaries, and the boundary between reality and fiction. His interest in the journey and its inherent narrative has led him to focus on some of the elusive phenomena that surround us (migratory, meteorological, spiritual…), and the forces that act upon these. He has produced several bodies of work in the form of installations, videos, sculptures, photography, performances, in-situ/in-socius interventions and archives. Over the last dozen years, he has built his practice around performative excursions across North America, Europe and Asia. In 2013, Beaulieu completed a trilogy of transfrontier odysseys titled VVV, in collaboration with writers, geographers and philosophers. Together, they followed the migratory path of the monarch butterfly (Vecteur Monarque, 2007); chased the winds across America in a 25-day continental navigation (Ventury, 2010) and surrendered themselves to fate and luck on the roads of chance (Vegas, 2012). In the summer of 2014, Beaulieu embarked on a slow, month-long, meandering drift via kayak down the winding rivers that lead from southern Québec to the Atlantic Ocean, at the mouth of the Hudson River in New York (Meander). His work has been presented in several countries, most notably in solo exhibitions in the United States (Pacific Sky Exhibition); in Mexico (Centro de la Imagen), in Belgium (Experimental Intermedia), in Singapore (Plastique Kinetic Worms Art Centre Kinetic Worms Art Centre), and across Canada, including the Banff New Media Institute, the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, the Art Gallery of Windsor, the Leonard & Bina Ellen Art Gallery, the Centre Clark, the Centre d’exposition CIRCA, the Musée de Lachine, the Galerie des arts visuels de l’Université Laval, the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Sherbrooke. His work is included in numerous public and private collections in Canada, the US, France and Mexico. Beaulieu has also produced many public art projects in the form of performative or relational interventions, or as permanent public art installations within architectural and landscaped environments.