Patrick Berube, Autre/Fois at Art Center of Kamouraska, Kamouraska, Quebec

“Autre/Fois” by Patrick Berube at Art Center of Kamouraska, Kamouraska, Quebec, 15/06/2024 – 02/09/2024.

Patrick Bérubé offers a colorful and tinkered space, but paradoxically very organized. Using collected, recovered, transformed and biodegradable materials, it offers a reading of different historical, industrial, cultural and even religious heritages, relying on different legacies of the past and seizing various traditions, beliefs and knowledge of the past to build her thought. One of the main materials in the exhibition – mycelium – is made from the root structure of a mushroom: reishi or Ganoderma lucidum. Also known as the “mushroom of immortality,” it has long been used to promote health and longevity in Asia. Mycelium is a remarkable and durable material, increasingly used to replace packaging materials, polystyrene foam or other single-use plastics. Beyond its ecological qualities, the artist also uses the mushroom for its semantic richness. For example, the mushroom has no territory and takes the amplitude it wants. It has no borders, no limitations, no frame. Even if it is not plant-based, it either needs the living or the dead to survive. In the form of yeast, it is involved in the production of bread or wine, elements that the artist links to the symbolism of the mill, of rural life in the past, and even to the Catholic religion. It is with poetry, dreaminess and humor that Patrick questions and examines our contemporary concerns and practices – such as the economy, trade and agriculture – questioning the way we perceive and shape our environment today. Paradoxically, the greatest devastation of our time – in addition to climate change – is largely due to the emergence of private property. Indeed, the appearance of agriculture seems to be the culminating point where humans began to manage and modify nature to control ecosystems and its different cycles. For the benefit of private owners, cultivated land, previously intended for collective use, was transformed into privatized spaces. Known as enclosure, this policy heralded the beginnings of capital and the capitalist. It aimed and made it possible to move from an agriculture perceived as not very productive to a more intensive and motorized agriculture.