Ciel variable 87 – SERIES

Vincent Bonin, Exhibiting Art in the Late 1960s and Early 1970s – Anne Bénichou

Ciel variable 87 – SERIES | Interviews
Authors: Anne Bénichou, Vincent Bonin

August 22, 2016 [originally published in Winter 2011] — An artist, archivist, historian, and art theoretician by training, the independent curator Vincent Bonin has recently organized, alone or in collaboration, a series of exhibitions that shed light on a turning point in the history of Canadian contemporary art: the late 1960s and early 1970s. Bonin’s principal subjects of reflection are discursive productions, the conditions for their expression and …

Maxime Coulombe, Imaginer le posthumain – Marianne Cloutier

Ciel variable 87 – SERIES | Book Reviews
Authors: Marianne Cloutier

August 24, 2016 [originally published in French only in Winter 2011] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.

Susan MacWilliam, Remote Viewing – Pierre Rannou

Ciel variable 87 – SERIES | Book Reviews
Authors: Pierre Rannou

August 29, 2016 [originally published in French only in Winter 2011] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.

Perspectives 2010 – Stephanie Gibson

Ciel variable 87 – SERIES | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Stephanie Gibson | Artists: Hong-An Truong, Lena Herzog, Matthew Porter

August 31, 2016 [originally published in Winter 2011] — “Perspectives,” at the International Center of Photography in New York, is a new exhibition series focusing on emerging photographers and filmmakers. The inaugural presentation features the work of five young artists – Carol Bove, Lena Herzog, Matthew Porter, Ed Templeton, and Hong-An Truong – who employ various strategies in image-making that highlight the ever-apparent fact that the medium can take on any subject and show itself in a myriad of forms.

Nicolas Baier – Pierre Bertrand

Ciel variable 87 – SERIES | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Pierre Bertrand | Artists: Nicolas Baier

Septembre 6, 2016 [originally published in French only in Winter 2011] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.

Runa Islam – Julien Champagne

Ciel variable 87 – SERIES | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Julien Champagne | Artists: Runa Islam

Septembre 7, 2016 [originally published in French only in Winter 2011] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.

Marisa Portolese – James D. Campbell

Ciel variable 87 – SERIES | Exhibition reviews
Authors: James D. Campbell | Artists: Marisa Portolese

September 13, 2016 [originally published in Winter 2011] — While acclaimed Montreal-based photographic artist Marisa Portolese has always used people she knows as subjects in her work, her new photographic series, Dream Weavers (of which this show, “Pietà,” is a stand-alone excerpt), marks something of a departure. Here, she turns inwards, essaying an up-close-and-personal narrative involving members of her own family while constructing a poetic meta-narrative that is rife with feelings, memories, and the numinous.

Catherine Bodmer, Duo – Nathalie Guimond

Ciel variable 87 – SERIES | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Nathalie Guimond | Artists: Catherine Bodmer

September 15, 2016 [originally published in French only in Winter 2011] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.

Johanne Biffi, Route 389 – Sylvain Campeau

Ciel variable 87 – SERIES | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Sylvain Campeau | Artists: Johanne Biffi

September 20, 2016 [originally published in French only in Winter 2011] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.

Susan Dobson, Dislocation – Gary Michael Dault

Ciel variable 87 – SERIES | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Gary Michael Dault, Pierre Dessureault | Artists: Susan Dobson

September 22, 2016 [originally published in Winter 2011] — All of the large-scale colour photographs making up Susan Dobson’s recent Toronto exhibition “Dislocations” contribute in varying ways to her notion of dislocation as a modification – as she puts it on her Web site – of “time, space and geography, where surroundings can seem both familiar and foreign.” She notes, as well, that “a pervasive and persistent form of déjà vu dominates the work, derived in part through the combination of digitally manipulated images with photographs shot in the documentary mode.”

Les 41e Rencontres d’Arles, Du lourd et du piquant – Pierre Dessureault

Ciel variable 87 – SERIES | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Pierre Dessureault

September 27, 2016 [originally published in French only in Winter 2011] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.

William Kentridge, Five Themes – Stephen Horne

Ciel variable 87 – SERIES | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Stephen Horne | Artists: William Kentridge

September 29, 2016 [originally published in French only in Winter 2011] — A resurrection of hand-drawn film animation as a procedure to be presented in museum installations in this era of digital abstraction is a brilliant move. The simplicity of this strategy highlights the delusion resident in the efforts of so many contemporary artists to produce a critical art practice using technologically “advanced” techniques. In many cases, these attempts simply play a role in confirming the cultural status quo.

Jocelyne Alloucherie, Climats – René Viau

Ciel variable 87 – SERIES | Exhibition reviews
Authors: René Viau | Artists: Jocelyne Alloucherie

4 octobre 2016 [originellement publié à l’hiver 2011] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.

Bodies in Trouble / Corps en péril – Carol Payne

Ciel variable 87 – SERIES | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Carol Payne | Artists: Gretta Pratt, Lana Slezic, Yves Klein

October 6, 2016 [originally published in French only in Winter 2011] — A limp body brought back to life, a figure leaping impossibly into the air, a gun wielded by a faceless hand: with images like these, “Bodies in Trouble,” Galerie SAW Gallery’s concise but ambitious exhibition of photo-based work, explores the body, performance, media, and danger. Mounted as part of Festival X, Ottawa’s biennial city-wide photography festival, “Bodies in Trouble” pairs photojournalistic images with performance art, implicitly critiquing the news image and stressing a visual poetics through juxtapositions of these forms.

Michel Campeau, La chambre noire – Richard Baillargeon, On Obsolescence and Being Photographic

Ciel variable 87 – SERIES | Interviews, Portfolios
Authors: Richard Baillargeon | Artists: Michel Campeau

October 11, 2016 [originally published in Winter 2011] — Michel Campeau, who has been a contemporary-art photographer for four decades, has received the Duke and Duchess of York Prize (2010), the Jean-Paul-Riopelle Career Grant (2009), and the Higashikawa International Photography Prize in Japan (1994). His work, which explores the subjective and narrative dimensions of images, questions the conventions of documentary photography. A retrospective exhibition of his work in 1996 at the Canadian Contemporary Photography Museum covered his production from 1971 to 1996. Campeau is represented by Galerie Simon Blais (Montreal), and lives and works in Montreal.

Chuck Samuels, Before Photography – Chuck Samuels, The Figure of the Photographer

Ciel variable 87 – SERIES | Interviews, Portfolios
Authors: Chuck Samuels | Artists: Chuck Samuels

October 13, 2016 [originally published in Winter 2011] — Chuck Samuels’s photographs have been exhibited, published, and collected extensively in Quebec, Canada, and abroad. His installation and video works have been presented in various venues, including several Canadian film and video festivals, and his photographs are in numerous collections in Canada, France, Belgium and the United States.

Yan Giguère, Attractions – Sylvain Campeau, Gravity and Tropism

Ciel variable 87 – SERIES | Interviews, Portfolios
Authors: Sylvain Campeau | Artists: Yan Giguère

October 18, 2016 [originally published in Winter 2011] — Yan Giguère has been a well-known figure in the Quebec contemporary art scene since the mid-1990s. His most recent photographic works were in solo exhibitions at Galerie Optica in 2009, Centre VU in 2008 and 2002, and Galerie B-312 in 2002. His pieces, which are in a number of collections, highlight the poetry of the everyday in series with strong narrative potential arranged on the walls of the exhibition space.

Alain Pratte, Histoires – Mona Hakim, A Thousand Journeys

Ciel variable 87 – SERIES | Interviews, Portfolios
Authors: Mona Hakim | Artists: Alain Pratte

October 20, 2016 [originally published in Winter 2011] — Since 1973, Alain Pratte has produced numerous photographic projects, a number of which have been in exhibitions in Canada and abroad, including France and Venezuela. His work bears witness to passing time, the permanence or fleeting aspect of objects, unpredictable fates, and illusory ambitions.

Series

Ciel variable 87 – SERIES | Portfolios
Artists: Alain Pratte, Chuck Samuels, Michel Campeau, Yan Giguère

[Winter 2011] Fragmented narratives, recording of traces, and role playing within the image are some of the ways in which the artists presented in this issue approach the notion of series. Systematic or scattered, the series provides a means to gather multiple images to evoke a personal universe, possible dramas, a disappearing world, or the […]

Narrative Series

Ciel variable 87 – SERIES | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon | Artists: Alain Pratte, Chuck Samuels, Michel Campeau, Yan Giguère

[Winter 2011] The works presented in this issue are characterized by the accumulation of a large number of images and the creation of series that may be systematic, or may be intuitive and fragmentary. In some of these works we can discern an iterative mode that operates in the formal arrangement, the object of investigation, […]