Montserrat DURAN MUNTADAS

Since 2016, Montserrat Duran Muntadas combines her two favorite materials in her artworks, which seem to be incompatible at first glance: fiber and glass. Her interest in fiber comes from her childhood: her grandparents worked in the fiber industry. As for glass, Duran Muntadas has specialized herself in the techniques of moulding, after being conquered by this special, contrasted material, offering parallels with the paradoxical character of the human being. The sculptures and installations of Duran Muntadas oscillate between a vibrant and colourful aesthetic, in the image of her country of origin, Spain, and the silent sobriety of her new homeland, Canada. She puts in contrast multiple textures, shimmering colors, and profound themes.

Duran Muntadas creates artworks that resonate with the ideas of maternity and personnal childhood memories. Her sculptures appear as oversized microbiomes, full of color and texture contrasts, and they captivate us by their delicate nature, but also their strangeness. Allusions to flora often manifest themselves in her work. Indeed, floral motifs encased in different glass bulbs excite our sense of touch, by the softness of the embroided fabric; and our ears, in the sound of the glass delicately blown.

“The imagination of Montserrat Duran Muntadas is abundant. Far from being childish, her recent artworks refer to biology, as well as the physical reality of femininity: multiplication of bacteria, references to the digestive and reproductive systems. Under a festive appearance, drama looms: diseases appear, filiation is impossible. This duality confers a great depth of signification to the artworks. In what seems almost like animated sculptures, the artist combines materials and techniques, borrowing from animal and vegetal lifeforms, and even human organs, but transformed by their idiosyncrasy. Glass is blown or worked with the blowtorch and fiber is embroidered numerically or screen printed: the materials are interwoven, narrowly melded, as though it were their natural form. Their combination generates a differentiation of textures. Fascinating, these textures arouse our desire to touch them and experience their sensation: smoothness, fluffiness, softness, roughness.” Pascale Beaudet, Vie des Arts no 258, 2020 (translated from French by Galerie Bernard).

Montserrat Duran Muntadas was born in 1984 at Terrassa, Spain, and now lives and works in Montreal since 2012. She completed a bachelor’s in fine arts at the Universitat de Barcelona, Spain (2010), and graduated from the Centro Nacional del Vidrio à la Real Fabrica de Cristales de La Granja, Spain (2007). She participated in over 30 collective exhibitions internationally, notably at La Guilde, Montreal (2017-2018-2019-2020), the Vitrine sur l’art of Montreal (2019), the Matéria Centre, Quebec (2018), the SOFA Sculpture Objects Functional Art and Design of Chicago (2016), as well as the Musée des maîtres et artisans du Québec, Ville Saint-Laurent (2015). Her sculptural artworks have also been presented at the exhibition center of Mont-Laurier (2020), at the Art Center of La Sarre (2019), the Jacqueline de Repentigny Library, Verdun, the Exhibition Center of Amos (2018), as well as the Galerie Espace Verre, Montreal, and the Maison de la Culture Rivière-des-Prairies (2015). In 2021, she showed her work at the Lethbridge Center exhibition, Ville Saint-Laurent, and at the Art Center Jacques-et-Michel-Auger, Victoriaville. She realized her first public artwork (1%) in 2019 (Elementary school for the project 2950 Jarry East), Montreal, and her second for the Centre d’interprétation des biosciences Armand-Frappier. Duran Muntadas has won the François-Houdé prize in 2019 and the Award for Glass of the Canadian Clay and Glass Gallery, Waterloo, Ont. in 2017. She will have an artist residency at the prestigious Pilchuck Glass School Stanwood, Washington, from October 6 to November 22 2020. In addition, she received many grants from the Canada Council for the Arts (2016), the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec (2016-2017-2018-2019), the SODEC (2015-2016-2019) and the ForCGal foundation (2017).

CLIQUEZ ICI / CLICK HERE (10 downloads) to download the visual pamphlet of the exhibition “LE JARDIN DE NOS ENTRAILLES”
CLICK HERE to watch our visual tour of the exhibition “LE JARDIN DE NOS ENTRAILLES” on Youtube.
CLICK HERE to watch our visual tour of the exhibition “PEAUX IMMÉDIATES” on Youtube.
CLIQUEZ ICI/CLICK HERE (141 downloads) to download the visual pamphlet of the exhibition “PEAUX IMMÉDIATES”
Learn more about the artist here:
Matières : « Montserrat Duran Muntadas : L’art de donner vie par l’union du verre et du textile »
La fabrique culturelle : « Montserrat Duran Muntadas : Donner vie par l’union du verre et du textile »
Centre d’art La Sarre : « Montserrat Duran Muntadas »
Montserrat Duran Muntadas: « Mes beaux enfants et autres anomalies »