PARADISE POOLS

1985 | Museum of Contemporary Art of Montreal, Quebec, Canada

Paradise Pools, 1983, installation view Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, at la Cité du Havre.
4 roues de feu (foreground), ceramic and pigments, 97 x 97 x 46 cm
Ruche de feu, 1983, ceramic and pigments, 97 x 97 x 92 cm
Les Bonhommes, 1983, ceramic, fabric, clay slip and pigments, 100 x 100 x 66 cm
La Vierge, ceramic and glass, 100 x 100 x 97 cm, 1983
La Vierge (detail), ceramic and glass, 100 x 100 x 97 cm, 1983
La Piscine, slate, encaustic, wood, 132 x 102 x 102 cm, 1983

Photos © Yvon Boulerice

Paradise Pools is composed of four separate figurative sculptures. Employing numerous materials and eclectic and anachronistic elements, the heavy, imposing works are related both formally through a repetition of line, gesture and colour and through a common inversion of paradisical imagery. As the title “Paradise Pools” suggests, this inverted image of paradise conforms more closely to that held by contemporary suburban garden and pool installation companies.

Extract from communiqué, 26 March 1985 – 20 April 1985, Paradise Pools, Mercer Union, Toronto.

“…In this paradise, the Virgin kicks up her heels under her glass veil, the minimal planes of the pool bear the traces of an angel on the diving board, the hardworking fellow demonstrates a sexualized creation that isn’t procreation and the fiery wheels both guard us from and lead us to paradise.”

Stephen Schofield