ARTGEIST II – FREE FIGURES (2015-2016)
Ciel variable presents the artworks created and acquired during its second fund-raising campaign, conducted in 2015–16. In the same spirit as Sitegeist, the 2012–13 campaign, Artgeist proposed that collectors support the magazine by acquiring an original work created specifically for them. This project also offered them the opportunity to meet with an artist of their choice in order to discuss their respective aesthetic motivations and thus to define the parameters of the work to be produced.
This second campaign was focused around the theme of the portrait, understood in the broadest way possible – a self-portrait, or a portrait of loved ones, or even a portrait of someone with an important symbolic value. One might even have conceived of an image evoking someone absent through an object or a place. Free Figures was open to such diversity of sensibilities and possible interpretations of the portrait. The resulting artworks brought a number of these possibilities to life…
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Form: Experimentation and Transformation – Sylvain Campeau
October 15, 2015 [originally published on March 31, 2010] — Looking back over twenty years and trying to retrace the path of experiments with images, we start in the early 1990s, when a couple of newcomers, Alain Paiement and Roberto Pellegrinuzzi, were already starting to turn heads. In an essay published in 1992, Denis Lessard tried to show what these ...
Some views, some perspectives – Suzanne Paquet
October 22, 2015 [originally published on May 31, 2010] — “Landscape” photography – that which depicts the territory, the environment, places – is no doubt one of the most widely practised photographic genres, by various categories of picture takers: topographers, explorers, artists, tourists, and amateur photographers.
Reading Ciel variable: The Magazine as Site of Photographic History – Zoë Tousignant
November 26, 2015 — I have been reading Ciel variable since 1996. A while ago, its editor-in-chief, Jacques Doyon, asked me to write an essay, destined for the Archives section of the magazine’s website, that would demonstrate “the importance of the magazine as a medium and space of exploration for photography.” And so, over the past few weeks, I have ...
To the Editor of Ciel variable – Hannah Claus
October 16, 2015
To the Editor of Ciel variable:
While I was at first excited to read the review of Rebel Yells: Dress and Political Re-dress in Contemporary Indigenous Art, curated by Rhonda L. Meier and Lori Beavis at the FOFA Gallery, I was soon disappointed with the article and with Ciel Variable’s editorial staff for publishing this text. The curatorial ...
Letter to the Editor – Lori Beavis
October 27, 2015
Dear Editor,
Re: L’habit fait-il le moine/ Do the clothes make the man?
Thank you for setting up a situation through the September 2015 review of The Rebel Yells: Dress and Political Re-dress in Contemporary Indigenous Art/ Le cri rebelle: habillement et redressement politique dans l’art autochtone actuel to continue the conversation started by this exhibition.
From the beginning of ...
Reactions to the Article on the Exhibition The Rebel Yells…
January 20, 2016 — We received two long letters to the editor, by Hannah Claus and by Lori Beavis, written in reaction to Bénédicte Ramade’s essay on the exhibition The Rebel Yells: Dress and Political Re-dress in Contemporary Indigenous Art, published in issue 101 of the magazine (autumn 2015).
Jean-François LeBlanc. Revisiting Montreal’s Backstage at the End of a Century – Tema Stauffer
March 1, 2017 — A retrospective of ninety-five black-and-white photographs by Jean-François LeBlanc was recently exhibited at Maison de la culture Côtes-des-Neiges, presenting a look back at a fertile decade of life in Montreal beginning in the mid-1980s…
Myriam Yates, Gander Islands – Sylvain Campeau
15 mai 2018 — Originally published in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.
Jacynthe Carrier, Paysage : Faire le jour – Sylvain Campeau
September 10, 2018 — Originally published in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.
Dak’Art 2018. Focus sur la photographie – Érika Nimis
October 19, 2018 — Originally published in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.
Linda Rutenberg, The Garden at Night | The Untamed Garden – Christian Roy
November 16, 2018 — Does the floral motif, so frequent throughout the history of art, still have a place in contemporary art? As a matter of fact, it did recur in a couple of Montreal exhibitions of the spring and summer of 2018. If one of these gathered artists in several mediums under this theme, this motif will be dealt ...
Martin Désilets, Matière noire / L’index – Sylvain Campeau
April 3, 2019 — Originally published in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.
Developing Historical Negatives — Robert Anderson
September 30, 2019 — In Developing Historical Negatives, OCAD University professor Gabrielle Moser (Photography and Belonging in the British Empire, Penn State UP, 2019) commissions artists who explore the ‘racialized body.’ …
Adam Basanta – Sylvain Campeau
November 26, 2019 — Originally published in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.
MOMENTA 2021: The Curator Is Chosen
COVID-19 makes all cultural programs futile. MOMENTA | Biennale de l’image is nevertheless turned to the future, as “going forward with the next edition is a way of engaging in dialogue and interaction.” MOMENTA is therefore announcing that the 2021 edition will be organized by German curator Stefanie Hessler. The title of the biennale will be Sensing ...
Sent to the front to find evidence of the effects of the novel coronavirus, photojournalists were among the workers most exposed to the virus. Physician Jenell Stewart, specialist in infectious diseases and in a couple with a photographer, published a guide for image professionals. The list of things to do and not to do reminds us of ...
The Photograph of the Year, before the Virus
They say the world will never be the same again. But will gatherings – happy and less happy, carnivals and demonstrations – really disappear? Year after year, the World Press Photo competition takes stock of what brings life and death on the planetary scale. The 2020 edition, the winners of which have just been announced, could be ...
The Toronto online sales platform FFOTO, active since 2015, is rising to prominence in this time of physical distancing, as a certain virus is forcing the closure of galleries and the cancellation of fairs. FFOTO is doing more, however, than purveying an inventory of forty thousand photographs. Since early April, “FFOTO’s Five Quarantine Questions” has encouraged artists ...
Objective: $600,000 for Quebec Art
The Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal wants to do its part: it has announced that it will devote its entire 2020 acquisition budget, $300,000, to Quebec art. Even better: it wants to double that amount. To reach this goal, the Fondation du MAC is inviting the museum’s major partners, collectors, and the public to contribute. The museum is ...
Reinvented Events: Rencontres d’Arles
Even the huge Les Rencontres de la photographie in Arles is in limbo. Is the summer festival to be held, delayed, or cancelled? All scenarios are being reviewed and we are promised an answer before the end of the month. But “Les Rencontres d’Arles at home” is already underway. There’s something for everyone, from learners – eight ...
The first Paris Photo New York fair didn’t take place as planned in early April. It’s been postponed, though, not cancelled. In the meantime, until April 30, the 1,200 works in the catalogue are available online. The images can be consulted gallery by gallery or via different search engines (photo book, for example) but, in the end, ...
Reinvented Events: CONTACT Photography Festival
Usually, May is the month for the CONTACT Photography Festival in Toronto. Cancelled since early in the health crisis, the 2020 edition may eventually be held at another time and in another form that doesn’t involve bringing together all of the city’s disseminators. Things will take place case by case. Nevertheless, it’s worth pointing out the impressive scope ...
Forty-eight hours of virtual reality, headset included – sound good? PHI gives you the opportunity to experience it in the comfort of your home. Although the centre in Old Montreal must remain closed, it is mobilizing to make accessible “the best virtual reality films and documentaries,” delivered to you by bike, “ready to use.” For forty-eight hours and ...
They say that he has an unrelenting eye and a creative fervour, that he is inspired by the desire to “destabilize and draw unremittingly from the margins of society, the watchable, and his own works.” He is Donigan Cumming, image artist, celebrated with a digital box setcontaining his twenty-six videos, as well as written and sound documents. The ...
The nurse, her lips pursed, looks beaten down. But it is the marks on her skin that reflect the impact of the days spent at the front in a mask. All of Italian photographer Alberto Giuliani’s portraits taken at the San Salvatore hospital in Pesaro, a city on the Adriatic, testify to the commitment of the nurses, anaesthetists, ...