Underground Art

Axel Morgenthaler’s “.98.” Video by Matt McLaughlin

It becomes obvious as soon as you enter the métro car: this will be no ordinary ride. The usual advertisements and bright orange colour have been replaced by a dark blue, wood-textured film covering the car’s interior walls. Distorted, semi-transparent photos are pasted on the windows. As the métro doors close, eerie music starts playing, followed by the mournful wail of a fog horn.

Nowhere are the odd sounds and visuals explained, which is exactly what artist Rose-Marie Goulet wanted when she created Point de fuite, an unprecedented art project that has been riding the rails of the métro’s Orange Line since last September. When she first teamed up with the Montreal Transit Corp. to create the installation, in 2006, she insisted that it not be labelled explicitly as an art project.

“It’s by chance that you come across this car,” Goulet explained. “People aren’t expecting it, that’s what’s important.”

At Henri Bourassa station, meanwhile, métro riders have even more unusual art to consider: .98, a new light mural that was inaugurated last April. Located in one of Henri Bourassa’s long corridors, the mural consists of several dozen LED lights programmed to change colours and blink in different patterns.

Art has been part of Montreal’s métro since the system first opened in 1966. In some ways, with its abundance of sculptures, murals and unique architectural details, it is a vast underground gallery through which hundreds of thousands of commuters just happen to pass every day. What makes .98 and Point de fuite stand out is the way they engage métro riders in unorthodox ways.

When lighting designer Axel Morgenthaler was commissioned to create a new work of art in the Henri-Bourassa station, he wanted to make something unusual that would grab the attention of harried commuters.

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Turn on the Lights

In Seoul, a 1970s-era department store with blank concrete walls (below) was enlivened by the addition of LED lights that turned its exterior into a dynamic light show. Photo courtesy of the Architect’s Newspaper.

On the television screen in a dark viewing room at the National Film Board in Montreal, it’s a hot summer night in 1947. Crowds throng the sidewalks of Ste. Catherine Street, bathed in bright neon, theatre marquees and billboards. “All over the city, the night air is alive with the laughter and gaiety of a carnival mood,” exclaims the narrator in the jaunty, dapper tone typical of the era. Cut to more lights; happy faces fill the frame.

It’s no coincidence that some of the most iconic and beloved images of the city date from the middle of the twentieth century, when light was warmly embraced by the world’s metropoles. Every city with dreams of making it big boasted a Great White Way, the best and brightest part of town to which crowds flocked, looking for excitement. Ever since electricity was invented in the late nineteenth century, light has been used to define urban space and create a sense of place. Stern white light projected against the facade of a church or city hall instills a sense of power and gravitas; the blinking neon and all-consuming illumination of a busy main street, by contrast, shouts, “You are here!” with giddy enthusiasm.

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