FRANÇOIS MORELLI

Ink and drawings

Vernissage Sunday, July 28, at 2 p.m.

Narrative constructivism considers a story as a constructed interplay between interpersonal, social, and cultural relations, and not as a fixed or whole narrative with a singular meaning.

In the exhibition Longing To Tell (Reconstructed Memories), François Morelli graphically re-members and re-connects stories with spaces suggesting embodied experience through rubber stamping and mark making on paper. Two corpora are presented: the first consisting of lyrical, dreamlike drawings, dating from the prepandemia that announce the second corpus, works created during the last three years, which reflect the new environment of the artist in the Laurentian village of Val-Morin.

©photo: Nat Gorry

Born in Tiohtià-ke (Montreal), François Morelli received a BFA at Concordia University in 1975. Since then, his practice has been interdisciplinary, performative, and relational. Between 1981 and 1990 Morelli lived in the greater New York area where he completed an MFA at the Mason Gross School of the Arts, Rutgers University, (NJ) in 1983. He began teaching in 1981 and retired from Concordia University in 2019. Recipient of numerous grants and residencies, he has been performing and exhibiting his work since 1977.

 

He was represented in Montreal by Christiane Chassay from 1991 to 2004 and Joyce Yahouda from 2006 to 2017, and by the Horodner Romley Gallery from 1993 to 1995, and has been with Chiguer Contemporary Art in Quebec City and Montreal since 2022. He was awarded the Prix d’excellence by the Biennale du dessin, de l’estampe et du papier du Québec (Alma) in 1993; he received the Prix Louis-Comtois in 2007 and the Prix Ozias-Leduc by la Fondation Émile-Nelligan in 2021. He shares his life with the art and design historian Diane Charbonneau and their son the art historian and artist Didier Morelli.