The artwork of Katherine Melançon and Camille Jodoin-Eng in Dialogue in Current Exhibition at Patel Brown
Currently on view at the Patel Brown Gallery until February 22nd, 2025 are the artworks of artists Katherine Melançon and Camille Jodoin-Eng. These two exhibits compliment one another while encouraging individuals to reconsider our relationship with the natural world. Jodoin-Eng’s Sun Shrine explores the connection between the self, the sun, and the universe. Melançon’s artworks such as Calendrier perdu de l'Humilicène and Soleil couchant - Monument au soleil (après Chapdelaine) proposes a deeper interconnectedness between humans and the natural cycles of the planet.
Upon entering the gallery, viewers encounter Melançon’s exhibit, Monument au Soleil. A series of digitized scans of various plant life and waste titled Photosynthèse are located on the gallery’s left wall. Using scanography, a technology that turns objects into digital images by scanning them, various natural objects such as plants and flowers, some of them being AI generated, are manipulated, creating an improvised performance. Each image is made unique through this technological process, reflecting nature’s anomalies. Soleil couchant - Monument au soleil (après Chapdelaine) is a tapestry that directly communicates with the sun’s position in Montreal. The tapestry is digitally wired, programmed to change colours, revealing subtle yellow and red details that ever-so-slightly change shades in real time in accordance to the sunset in Montreal. Thus, the viewer is forced to spend an extended period of time considering this work to consider its continual conversation with the sun’s positionment. In addition to this piece, her ceramic work titled Calendrier perdu de l'Humilicène proposes a rethinking of the seasons based on the natural cyclical changes of the environment, envisioning six seasons that align with this cycle, a chronology that positions itself alongside the rhythms and cycles of plant life and the natural world. Melançon’s work actively opposes the temporality of technology by corresponding it with the slower temporality of the natural world and turning our attention to it through technology.
As the viewer continues to move through the gallery they become immersed in a warm meditative room coloured with hues of yellow, orange, and gold. This is Camille Jodoin-Eng’s Sun Shrine, a simultaneously grounding and celestial multi-media installation. In the third and last of her shrine series, Jodoin-Eng has created a calming space that connects the viewer to the natural world and the cosmos.
Jodoin-Eng made multiple large-scale panels using various recycled materials and waste, as well as four thousand sheets of gold leaf. On two of the panels, she created her own pictorial language made up of curving lines and dots. Each symbol evokes a different feeling, memory, or moment for the artist, while also remaining up to the viewer’s own interpretation and associations. Through these symbols, she is able to distill larger and more complex thoughts, feelings, and concepts into simple lines and dots, similarly to the way the solar system is represented and mapped.
In the middle of the room is a structure made of gold painted wooden beams flanked by four more celestial gold panels, its inside expanding into an infinite solar realm. This repetitive and infinite effect is created by mirrored walls placed on the sides, top and bottom of the structure’s interior. Without being able to see oneself when standing in front of it, this multidimensional reflective space highlights the relationship and reflective nature between the body, mind and physical space. The reflective effect of the mirrors is symbolic of the spiritual realm while the mirrors reflect physical objects that then only exist in our minds and from one’s own subjectivity. Jodoin-Eng also uses glass beads made out of recycled glass from bottles as objects to hang inside the structure. When creating work, she considers the entire lifespan of the piece, its materials, and their environmental impact. She sourced waste and recycled materials, such as wires, laundry lint, and shredded paper documents for Sun Shrine, while considering where the various parts of the installation will go on to live once the show is taken down. It is integral that the artwork she creates and its materiality aligns with her values.
Both Sun Shrine and Monument au Soleil encourage the audience to look to the natural world with closer attention, showing us the ways in which we coexist with it and what humans may be able to learn from it.
