Jean Gagnon – Ciel variable Magazine

Éric Desmarais, Caught Up in the System – An interview by Jean Gagnon

Ciel variable 129 - FROM CONTINENT TO CONTINENT | Entrevues
Authors: Jean Gagnon | Artists: Eric Desmarais

[Summer 2025] Caught Up in the System Éric Desmarais interviewed by Jean Gagnon [EXCERPT] In botanical science, a sporobolus is a droughttolerant grass with long, dense leaves. In art, it refers to Sporobole, an artist-run centre in Sherbrooke, Quebec. Rooted in its city and region for more than fifty years, first as the Regroupement des […]

Art, publics et cultures numériques – Jean Gagnon

Ciel variable 125 – AGGLOMERATIONS | Book Reviews
Authors: Jean Gagnon | Artists: Jean Gagnon

[Winter 2024] By Jean Gagnon Sous la direction de Suzanne Paquet et Alexandrine Théorêt Montréal, Presses de l’Université de Montréal, 2023, 201 pages [Excerpt] This book, published by a university press in spring 2023, bears a title that might lead one to believe that it addresses the publics for works circulating in digital networks. It […]

MOMENTA – Jean Gagnon

Biennials & Co.
Authors: Jean Gagnon

[October 4, 2023] By Jean Gagnon. Masquerades: Drawn to Metamorphosis is the title of the 18th edition of MOMENTA Biennale de l’image – a title full of promise, as the notion evokes the possibility of many carnivals. Masquerade is a device used in the visual arts, photography, film, theatre, and dance. There was once a pseudoscience, physiognomy, that sought to discern human character types by associating them with the features of animal faces, thus bringing the invisible into visibility…

Michel Lefebvre and Eva Quintas, From Digital Writing to Artificial Intelligence — Jean Gagnon

Ciel variable 123 – THE POWER OF INTIMACY | Interviews
Authors: Jean Gagnon

[Summer 2023] Michel Lefebvre and Eva Quintas, From Digital Writing to Artificial Intelligence An interview by Jean Gagnon [Excerpt] In 1993, Eva Quintas and Michel Lefebvre co-founded Agence TOPO, the original mission of which was to organize collective and multidisciplinary projects combining photography and literature. For a time, TOPO was distributing interactive and nonlinear literary […]

Michael Snow, The Artist’s Maman Book — Jean Gagnon

Ciel variable 122 – NIGHT ROUNDS | Essays
Authors: Jean Gagnon | Artists: Michael Snow

[Winter 2023] Michael Snow, The Artist’s Maman Book By Jean Gagnon [Excerpt] At age ninety-four, Michael Snow has published My Mother’s Collection of Photographs,1 which he called his “maman book” during its production. As the title does not indicate, the photographs in question were not taken by an artist but are typical family pictures, a […]

Alejandro G. Iñárritu, Carne y Arena — Jean Gagnon

Ciel variable 118 - EXHIBITING PHOTOGRAPHY | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Jean Gagnon | Artists: Alejandro G. Iñárritu

[Fall 2021] Arsenal art contemporain 17.03.2021 — 15.08.2021 By Jean Gagnon [Excerpt] It has long been possible to experience virtual reality works in Montreal,1 and in spring 2021 a “must-see”2 was Carne y Arena (Virtually Present, Physically Invisible) (2017) by Oscar-winning filmmaker Alejandro G. Iñárritu.3 The presentation in Montreal was thanks to the efforts of […]

Caroline Hayeur et D. Kimm – Jean Gagnon

Ciel variable 105 – MONTREALITIES | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Jean Gagnon | Artists: Caroline Hayeur, D. Kimm

April 23, 2020 [originally published in CV105 in Winter 2017] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.

Letter to Paul Wombell, Post-scriptum and Afterthoughts About the Automated Image – Jean Gagnon

Ciel variable 96 – PERFORMING FOR THE IMAGE | Essays
Authors: Jean Gagnon | Artists: Michael Snow

June 18, 2018 [originally published in CV96 in Winter 2014] — I had the pleasure of being invited by Chuck Samuels, the director of Le Mois de la photo à Montréal, to join Paul Wombell, the curator of Le Mois de la photo 2013, at the screening of art video shorts and a presentation of Michael Snow’s La région centrale (1970) at La Cinémathèque québécoise…

Pascal Dufaux, Le cosmos dans lequel nous sommes – Jean Gagnon

Ciel variable 86 - PERFORMANCE | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Jean Gagnon | Artists: Pascal Dufaux

July 11, 2016 [originally published in French only in Fall 2010] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.

Contrainte / Restraint – Jean Gagnon

Ciel variable 85 - CONFLICT | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Jean Gagnon | Artists: José Carlos Martinat

April 25, 2016 [originally published in French only in Summer 2010] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.

George Legrady, Cell Tango et Pockets Full of Memories – Jean Gagnon, George Legrady’s Images in Transit

Ciel variable 80 - IMAGE BANKS | Portfolios
Authors: Jean Gagnon | Artists: George Legrady

[Fall 2008] George Legrady’s recent Cell Tango project consists of a dynamically growing archive of cell-phone images, associated with indexical terms. When exhibited as a wall projection, the artwork unfolds a galaxy of images and the textual structure of their interaction. Pockets Full of Memories, Legrady’s previous project, had a similar structure. The project’s audience […]

Preservation of Artworks in the Era of Obsolescence – Jean Gagnon

Ciel variable 79 - COLOURS OF THE CITY | Essays
Authors: Jean Gagnon | Artists: Gary Hill, Jim Campbell, Nam June Paik

[Summer 2008] by Jean Gagnon My father, like many in his generation,1 was a big fan of family photographs. Anything and everything was an excuse to take “slides,” as he called them. We were living in Quebec City, and, aside from the pictures taken at Christmas and on summer trips to Maine, he amassed good documentation […]