Claude Cormier in the spotlight at the MMFA

Montreal Museum of Fine Arts
Sculpture Garden

MMFA: May-October 2013
Field of Poppies - TOM II

Claude Cormier is an internationally renowned Quebec landscape artist, an architect and urban designer. His work, entitled Field of Poppies - TOM II, is installed in the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts' Sculpture Garden on Du Musée Avenue. Located at the heart of the Museum complex, the Sculpture Garden features twenty-three works by Quebec, Canadian and international artists. It is one of the largest collections of public art in the city. The section of Du Musée Avenue bordering the Sculpture Garden has been transformed into a pedestrian mall until October.

This year, to celebrate this public space created at the heart of the Quartier du Musée, the MMFA and the Ville de Montréal asked Claude Cormier to create another temporary work. Field of Poppies - TOM II is composed of 5,060 red, green and white TOMs. The surprising optical effect, inspired by Claude Monet’s Poppy Field, transforms the avenue into a “field of flowers” where pedestrians are free to roam.

MMFA: May - October 2012
Carpet of Daises - TOM I

Previous year, in 2012, for several months Claude Cormier transformed a section of the asphalt on Du Musée Avenue into a carpet of daisies, as seen in the picture below. The work was called Carpet of Daises - TOM I. It was made of 3,500 temporary overlay markers (TOMs), which are raised markers that delineate temporary lanes on highways.

The markers were laid out as a regular grid, forming pointillist shifts between the yellow and the white. This  work created a strong chromatic link between the Museum’s separate pavilions.

For the subsequent editions of Claude Cormier's TOM installations visit these articles:

• MMFA 2014: Mirage - TOM III  here.
• MMFA 2017: Flower Power - TOM IV  here.

Click on images to enlarge them.