ROBERGE, Laurent (1948)

Laurent Roberge has served as a guest artist at various institutions in Canada and the United States. A professor at Dawson College since 2000, he creates monumental sculptures that question both the status of the art object and the creative process. As demonstrated in 8192 Ficelles Ordonnées (“8192 organized strings,” 1984), his work typically features an accumulation of pieces of paper, at times from colourful magazines such as National Geographic, that have been soaked in water and pasted to cords mounted on wood. These stacks of paper embody the slow, deliberate gestures that curb, to some extent, the frenzy of contemporary life and place the handling of materials back at the heart of sculptural practice.