Are you looking for interviews or an artist’s portfolios? Would you like to reread an exhibition or book review? In this section, you can access the content of archived Ciel variable issues by exploring different types of articles published in the magazine.
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.
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.
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.”
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 […]
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, […]
[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 […]
Ciel variable 86 - PERFORMANCE | Interviews
Authors: John K. Grande | Artists: Edward Burtynsky
June 2, 2016 [originally published in Fall 2010] — Edward Burtynsky […] has captured iconic images of human intervention in the landscape in works of a scope and scale that evidence how the activities and the layerings of nature and culture change a place. His recent books include China, Quarries, and Oil…
Ciel variable 86 - PERFORMANCE | Book Reviews
Authors: Claude Baillargeon | Artists: Benoit Aquin
June 7, 2016 [originally published in Fall 2010] — According to journalist Patrick Alleyn, Aquin’s co-traveller and collaborator of choice, this scourge constitutes “one of the most severe environmental disasters of our time.” In 2006, intending to raise public awareness, the two gained the sponsorship of the Canadian International Development Agency and made the first of three journeys to the affected areas…
Ciel variable 86 - PERFORMANCE | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Sylvain Campeau | Artists: William Eggleston
June 14, 2015 [originally published in French only Fall 2010] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.
Ciel variable 86 - PERFORMANCE | Exhibition reviews
Authors: John K. Grande | Artists: Laurent Guérin
June 16, 2016 [originally published in Fall 2010] — World Press Photo included his [Laurent Guérin] photographs of street children in India in a show held at the Maison de la Culture Frontenac in Montreal in 2004. These photographs – in which all the chaos and beauty of India, from street life to more contemplative imagery, are captured – became the book Hindi Pop.
Ciel variable 86 - PERFORMANCE | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Matthieu Brouillard | Artists: Donigan Cumming
June 21, 2016 [originally published in French in Fall 2010] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.
Ciel variable 86 - PERFORMANCE | Exhibition reviews
Authors: James D. Campbell | Artists: Bettina Hoffmann, Carlos & Jason Sanchez, Chih-Chien Wang, Eve K. Tremblay, Milutin Gubash
June 23, 2016 [originally published in Fall 2010] — This exhibition highlights narrative disruption and its consequences in five mature bodies of photographic and video work, and demonstrates how the uncanny seeps in and out of those ruptures in an auratic and seismic way, even as meaning and dénouement are delayed. Works by Bettina Hoffman, Carlos and Jason Sanchez, Milutin Gubash, Eve K. Tremblay, and Chih-Chien Wang…
Ciel variable 86 - PERFORMANCE | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Mylène Joly | Artists: Shirin Neshat, Shoja Azari
June 28, 2016 [originally published in French in Fall 2010] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.
Ciel variable 86 - PERFORMANCE | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Stephen Horne | Artists: Moyra Davey, Roy Arden
June 29, 2016 [originally published in Fall 2010] — True to its title, this exhibition consists of photographic images grouped thematically by way of their subject, “living things.” In this case, the sample extends from images of algae in a pond, to a dog’s foot, to a family portrait. What these photographs all have in common is that they are “of” some “thing,” they all depict a living thing (with the exception of one dead rabbit)…
Ciel variable 86 - PERFORMANCE | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Virginie Doré Lemonde | Artists: Emanuel Licha
July 5, 2016 [originally published in French only in Fall 2010] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.
Ciel variable 86 - PERFORMANCE | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Elizabeth Matheson | Artists: Esther Shalev-Gerz
July 7, 2016 [originally published in Fall 2010] — Within participatory arts there is often an implicit, yet compelling, assumption that media and public attention to issues that figure into public art attest to their social significance, while lack of interest evidences their irrelevance. That which is not spoken of, it seems, is assumed to have little or no consequence. However, as Esther Shalev-Gerz knows, it is often silent moments, ones that not only shape private lives…
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.
Ciel variable 86 - PERFORMANCE | Essays
Authors: Anne Bénichou
August 1, 2016 [originally published in Fall 2010] — In 2004, at Dazibao, “Performance et photographie: Point and Shoot” explored the close connections between performance and photography. In this exhibition, performance images were envisaged beyond their documentary function, as works in their own right. In 2007, the Leonard & Bina Ellen Gallery at Concordia University presented “9 Evenings Reconsidered: Art, Theatre, and Engineering, 1966,” an exhibition devoted to the eponymous evening of experimental performances held in New York in 1966…
Ciel variable 86 - PERFORMANCE | Essays
Authors: Mario Côté | Artists: Françoise Sullivan
August 3, 2016 [originally published in Fall 2010] — In October 2005, my chance meeting with the multidisciplinary artist Françoise Sullivan at the café of the Royal Museums of Fine Arts in Brussels led to the idea of reviving, almost sixty years later, an early masterpiece of modern dance: Danse dans la neige.
Ciel variable 86 - PERFORMANCE | Essays
Authors: Cyril Thomas | Artists: Eva et Franco Mattes, Joseph DeLappe, Lynn Hershman Leeson
August 8, 2016 [originally published in Fall 2010] — It is obvious – given the statements and actions of the SecondLife Liberation Army, the 3D reconfiguration of the Guantanamo prison filmed by Nonny de la Peña, Liberate Your Avatar by Paul Sermon, works by Agnès de Cayeux, and the productions of Nicolas Boone – that SecondLife, created by LindenLabs, is a territory and space that is widely used by artists, filmmakers, playwrights, and musicians…
Ciel variable 86 - PERFORMANCE | Essays
Authors: Barbara Clausen | Artists: Daniel Guzman, Kelly Walker, Luis Felipe Ortega, Seth Price
August 10, 2016 [originally published in Fall 2010] — A man walks into frame and presses his body into a corner. The camera zooms in on him as he forces his entire body into the confines of the triangular space that he has created. He shifts his hips and squeezes his arms and hands into the small space left between his body and the corner. His movements are slight, yet strenuous; there is a sexual, yet suppressed, almost violent tension in his striving to be absorbed by the architecture.
Ciel variable 86 - PERFORMANCE | Essays
Authors: David Tomas | Artists: Tim Clark
August 15, 2016 [originally published in Fall 2010] — Tim Clark. Reading the Limits” was produced by the Leonard & Bina Ellen Art Gallery at Concordia University. On one level, the exhibition was a retrospective devoted to Tim Clark, a Montreal-based performance artist who produced a series of important works between 1977 and 2003. On another level, it was designed to reopen the question of the contemporary status of the artist and the interstitial – post-1970s/contemporary academic – function of the artwork…
Ciel variable 86 - PERFORMANCE | Essays
Authors: Anne Bénichou
[Fall 2010] documents [de] PERFORMANCE Historic performances are currently being updated in different forms: exhibitions, appropriations, remediations, and re-enactments. These practices raise a number of questions about the status of performance documentation (photos, videos, and films in particular) and how it is interpreted, adressed here through multiple recent examples. DAVID TOMAS Tim Clark. Reading the […]
Ciel variable 86 - PERFORMANCE | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon
[Fall 2010] by Jacques Doyon MoMA’s major retrospective of the work of Marina Abramović marks museum institutions’ full recognition of the field of performance. In a way, this exhibition is the logical outcome of a movement of reactualization of historic performances that has been underway for more than a decade and to which Abramowic has […]
[Fall 2010] Historic performances are currently being updated in different forms: exhibitions, appropriations, remediations, and re-enactments. These practices raise a number of questions about the status of performance documentation (photos, videos, and films in particular) and how it is interpreted, addressed here through multiple recent examples. ÉDITORIAL DOSSIER EXPOSITIONS LECTURES PAROLES Purchase this issue
Ciel variable 85 - CONFLICT | Interviews
Authors: Claude Baillargeon
March 30, 2016 [originally published in Summer 2010] — The complete interview with Ann & Harry Malcolmson is now available online. For the past twenty years, they have dedicated themselves to the study and collecting of photography. With a particular interest in historical material drawn from the medium’s diverse aesthetic history, they have assembled one of Canada’s most distinctive collections.
Ciel variable 85 - CONFLICT | Exhibition reviews
Authors: James D. Campbell | Artists: Raymonde April
April 6, 2016 [originally published in Summer 2010] — Why is it that Raymonde April’s art always occupies the foreground of my consciousness when I think about photography – about what it is and what it can be ? Even as flashier and more graphically cinematographic photography rules the proverbial roost in the art world right now, April, a maverick artist, has long since staked out her territory and made it her wholly and uniquely her own.
Ciel variable 85 - CONFLICT | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Sylvain Campeau | Artists: Isabelle Hayeur
April 14, 2016 [originally published in French only in Summer 2010] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.
Ciel variable 85 - CONFLICT | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Virginie Doré Lemonde
April 18, 2016 [originally published in French only in Summer 2010] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.
Ciel variable 85 - CONFLICT | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Matthieu Brouillard | Artists: BrassaÏ, Claude Cahun
April 21, 2016 [originally published in French only in Summer 2010] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.
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.
Ciel variable 85 - CONFLICT | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Petra Halkes | Artists: David Hoffos
April 28, 2016 [originally published in Summer 2010] — Despite the impending calamities hidden in many of the works in Scenes from the House Dream, David Hoffos’s gathering of twenty installations into one, dark, enveloping space feels warm and fuzzy. True, a monster lurks under a boat, vapours rise in a noisy forest, and snow drifts through the open windows of a deserted house, but the exhibition curated by Shirley Madill remains appealing and enchanting.
Ciel variable 85 - CONFLICT | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Charles Guilbert | Artists: Nelson Henricks
May 2, 2016 [originally published in French only in Summer 2010] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.
Ciel variable 85 - CONFLICT | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Colette Tougas | Artists: Eija-Liisa Ahtila
May 5, 2016 [originally published in French only in Summer 2010] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.
Ciel variable 85 - CONFLICT | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Virginie Doré Lemonde | Artists: Chuck Samuels
May 9, 2016 [originally published in French only in Summer 2010] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.
Ciel variable 85 - CONFLICT | Exhibition reviews
Authors: René Viau | Artists: Gregory Sholette, John Jordan
May 12, 2016 [originally published in French only in Summer 2010] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.
Ciel variable 85 - CONFLICT | Essays, Portfolios
Authors: Karen Henry | Artists: Stan Douglas
May 16, 2016 [originally published in Summer 2010] — The impressive piece of public art addresses the very nature of public space. It is named after the two streets that cross at the north corner of the Woodward’s building, on which the artwork is installed. The image inhabits space like a sculpture, grandly overlooking the public and private courtyards of the new complex in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside.
Ciel variable 85 - CONFLICT | Portfolios
Authors: Amish Morrell | Artists: Allyson Mitchell, Graeme Smith, Louie Palu, Richard Johnson, Stephen Andrews, Suzanne Opton
May 19, 2016 [originally published in Summer 2010] — The theme of the exhibition War at a Distance, presented by the TPW Gallery in Toronto, was media representations of war in the context of debates over the Canadian presence in Afghanistan.
Ciel variable 85 - CONFLICT | Portfolios
Authors: Stephen Horne | Artists: Emanuel Licha
May 24, 2016 [originally published in Summer 2010] — These two works by Emanuel Licha are based on his interest in urban settings re-created for police or military training camps. The intention is to reveal the fully operational role of fiction in the reality of conflicts and in the composition of our portrayals of the foreign.
Ciel variable 85 - CONFLICT | Portfolios
Authors: Jacinto Lageira | Artists: Sophie Ristelhueber
May 26, 2016 [originally published in Summer 2010] — In Eleven Blowups, Sophie Ristelhueber uses elements of her own photographs to re-create images of bomb craters produced by the media. In showing the traces of destruction, these images, true and false at once, portray not the specificity of a single story and place but the experience of collapse.
Ciel variable 85 - CONFLICT | Portfolios
Artists: Emanuel Licha, Sophie Ristelhueber, Stan Douglas
Bombs opening up craters in streets, training camps that look like urban neighbourhoods, media perceptions of the war in Afghanistan, a look back at the riot as background for an urban renewal project… and images that use representation and fiction to try to convey these realities. SOPHIE RISTELHUEBER Eleven Blowups Poetics of Facts Jacinto Lageira […]
Ciel variable 85 - CONFLICT | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon
[Spring 2010] by Jacques Doyon This issue looks at the representation of conflicts and wars. Whether they are distant battles, terrorist attacks, or riots taking place in the heart of our cities, their communication to the public is often dominated by spectacularization and slanted views. The artists whose works brought together here address situations that […]
[Summer 2010] Bombs opening up craters in streets, training camps that look like urban neighbourhoods, media perceptions of the war in Afghanistan, a look back at the riot as background for an urban renewal project… and images that use representation and fiction to try to convey these realities. EDITORIAL PORTFOLIOS FOCUS EXHIBITIONS VOICES […]
Ciel variable 84 – INHABITED | Interviews
Authors: Johanna Mizgala | Artists: John Massey, Lynne Cohen, Roy Arden
[Spring 2010] Glen Bloom’s interest in contemporary art began during his first year of law school in Edmonton. The building adjoining the law faculty was that of the fine arts faculty; by chance or design, Bloom found that he was spending more time in the latter than the former, and it piqued his interest in […]
Ciel variable 84 – INHABITED | Book Reviews
Authors: Anne-Marie St-Jean Aubre
[Printemps 2010] You can read the bilingual article by switching over to the French version of this page : CV97 – Ouvrages à souligner. By Anne Marie St-Jean Aubre Reviewed books: Marie Perrault, Anne Ramsden. La collection et le quotidien, Rimouski, Musée régional de Rimouski, 2007, 55 p., ill. n. et b. et coul. Texte […]
Ciel variable 84 – INHABITED | Book Reviews
Authors: Stephen Horne | Artists: Lynne Cohen
[Spring 2010] Lynne Cohen Cover Cherbourg-Octeville : Le point du jour, 2009, 142 pp., col. ills. Bilingual text Cover, recently put out by the French publisher Le Point du Jour, presents the work of Montreal-based photographer Lynne Cohen. Cohen began photographing domestic interiors and has been pursuing a documentary-style description of institutional interior spaces for […]
Ciel variable 84 – INHABITED | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Jean-Pierre Vidal | Artists: Matthieu Brouillard
[Spring 2010] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. Centre Sagamie, Alma Du 3 septembre au 9 octobre 2009
Ciel variable 84 – INHABITED | Exhibition reviews
Authors: John K. Grande | Artists: Chris McCaw, Michael Flomen
[Spring 2010] The Rise of Abstraction in Photography Galerie Pangée, Montreal September 15 to October 12, 2009 Culled from a much larger exhibition at Aperture Gallery in New York, curated by Lyle Rexer, author of, among others, How to Look at Outsider Art,1 The Edge of Vision is a very special show that touches on […]
Ciel variable 84 – INHABITED | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Anne-Marie St-Jean Aubre | Artists: Gwenaël Bélanger
[Spring 2010] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. Casser l’image Expression, centre d’exposition de Saint-Hyacinthe Du 7 novembre au 20 décembre 2009
Ciel variable 84 – INHABITED | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Virginie Doré Lemonde | Artists: Jason Dodge, Rob Kovitz
[Spring 2010] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. Jason Dodge et Rob Kovitz Dazibao centre de photographies actuelles, Montréal Du 24 octobre au 28 novembre 2009
Ciel variable 84 – INHABITED | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Judith Parker | Artists: Michael Schreier
[Spring 2010] The Ottawa Art Gallery, Ottawa September 10 to November 15, 2009. Disquieting, painterly, poetic – these words come to mind on viewing Michael Schreier’s series of large-scale grey/blue/purple semi-abstract photographs, Disappearing Numbers (2007-20-09), and Or-Sarua (2009), which portray empty bunker-like interiors quietly resonating with a sense of tragedy. Despite their softened forms and […]
Ciel variable 84 – INHABITED | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Nathalie Guimond | Artists: Nicholas Pye, Sheila Pye
[Spring 2010] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. Galerie Art Mûr, Montréal Du 15 août au 12 septembre 2009
Ciel variable 84 – INHABITED | Exhibition reviews
Authors: James D. Campbell | Artists: Guido Guidi
[Spring 2010] CCA, Montreal September 11, 2009, to January 10, 2010 Nestled within the CCA’s Octagonal Gallery in conceptually elegant fashion, this thematic body of photographic work by the Italian photographer Guido Guidi paid tribute to an architectural masterwork while highlighting his own various strengths and idiosyncrasies as a creative artist preoccupied, for the last […]
Ciel variable 84 – INHABITED | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Sylvain Campeau | Artists: Yan Giguère
[Spring 2010] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. Galerie Optica, Montréal Du 12 septembre au 17 octobre 2009
Ciel variable 84 – INHABITED | Essays
Authors: John K. Grande | Artists: Andreas Gursky
[Spring 2010] by John K. Grande Andréas Gursky’s incredible take on the contemporary has much to do with the ascent of photography in the contemporary art world. And yet Gursky, as much as any photographier, is to be credited for raising that profile, thanks to his monumental photographic images. It is therefore ironic that for […]
Ciel variable 84 – INHABITED | Portfolios
Authors: Lei Ping | Artists: Hu Yang
[Spring 2010] Here are selections from a remarkable documentary work produced by Hu Yang, a Shanghai photographer who recently moved to Toronto. Shanghai Living comprises some five hundred portraits of Shanghai residents photographed in their own interiors, along with short excerpts from interviews in which each describes his or her way of life, values, and […]
Ciel variable 84 – INHABITED | Portfolios
Authors: Gary Michael Dault | Artists: Olga Chagaoutdinova
[Spring 2010] A résident of Canada for the last ten years, Olga Chagaoutdinova has remained interested in the evolution of the Russian society, where she experienced the early effects of perestroika. She returned to Russia to take photographs of people and interiors that juxtapose artefacts of traditional Soviet life with heterogeneous aspects of Western consumer […]
Ciel variable 84 – INHABITED | Portfolios
Authors: Jacques Doyon | Artists: Gabor Szilasi
[Spring 2010] Over the years, Gabor Szilasi has assembled a remarkable portrait of Quebecers as a community and of the Montreal urban landscape that earned him the Prix Borduas in 2009. Perhaps it took a com- pletely new eye to tease into visibility the multiple fibres woven into Quebec society. Szilasi’s portraits form a major […]
Ciel variable 84 – INHABITED | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon
[Spring 2010] by Jacques Doyon This issue presents portraits of people from all walks of life, most of them photographed in their interiors. There are also views of private places filled with things – décor, furniture – that testify to a presence. It is possible to think that individuality, self-representation, is manifested in a person’s […]
[Spring 2010] Portraits convey individualities, but they also express common conditions. Facial features, pose, clothing, and immediate environment contribute to a representation of self, but they also bring us closer to others. These images, like the photographers’ trajectories, portray uniqueness at the crossroads where cultures mix. EDITORIAL PORTFOLIOS FOCUS EXHIBITONS READINGS VOICES […]
Ciel variable 83 - MEDIUM : MAGAZINES | Interviews
Authors: John K. Grande | Artists: Robert Polidori
[Fall 2009] Robert Polidori’s photographies evoke a sense of tragedy, or of history – but, above all, of place. The analytical quality of his images is combined with the an- cient and contemporary, yet always topi- cal selection of places he works in, which have resulted in numerous popular books, including New Orleans after the […]
Ciel variable 83 - MEDIUM : MAGAZINES | Book Reviews
Authors: Anne-Marie St-Jean Aubre
[Fall 2009] You can read the bilingual article by switching over to the French version of this page : CV83 – Ouvrages reçus. By Anne Marie St-Jean Aubre Reviewed books: Martin Désilets, Le grand voyage, Longueuil, Plein sud, 2007, 87 p., ill. coul. Texte bilingue (français et anglais). Nicholas Pye & Sheila Pye, Toronto: Artcore/Fabrice […]
Ciel variable 83 - MEDIUM : MAGAZINES | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Corina Ilea | Artists: Chantal Gervais, Cindy Stelmackowich, Sarah Sudhoff
[Fall 2009] In Plain Sight Gallery, Montreal April 18 to May 23, 2009 The Rx exhibition, curated by Penny Cousineau-Levine and Zoe Casino at the In Plain Sight Gallery in Montreal, explores the inherent conflicts aroused by the intrusions of medical devices and representations into the construction of identity. The presupposed neutrality and innocence of […]
Ciel variable 83 - MEDIUM : MAGAZINES | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Sylvain Campeau | Artists: Bertrand Carrière, Serge Clément
[Fall 2009] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. Galerie Simon Blais, Montréal Du 10 juin au 1er août 2009
Ciel variable 83 - MEDIUM : MAGAZINES | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Philippe Guillaume | Artists: Sylvie Readman
[Fall 2009] Occurrence, Espace d’Art, and d’Essai Contemporain, Montreal May 14 to June 13, 2009 Sylvie Readman traveled to Argentina to create the core elements for her latest project, S’absenter (2009), exhibited recently at Espace Occurrence in Montreal. The refined and masterful seven photographs and three videos that form this project invite the viewer into […]
Ciel variable 83 - MEDIUM : MAGAZINES | Exhibition reviews
Authors: René Viau | Artists: John Massey, Roman Signer
[Automne 2009] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. VOX, centre de l’image contemporaine, Cinémathèque québécoise, Montréal Du 6 mars au 30 mai 2009
Ciel variable 83 - MEDIUM : MAGAZINES | Exhibition reviews
Authors: John K. Grande | Artists: Scott McFarland
[Fall 2009] Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography at the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa April 11 to September 13, 2009 Given his avid interest in gardening, west coast photographer Scott McFarland addresses the landscape with his photographs. Is he acutely aware of the history of landscape in art? The thirty-six works on view in this […]
Ciel variable 83 - MEDIUM : MAGAZINES | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Michèle Cohen Hadria | Artists: Jamshed Kholikov, Paolo William Tamburella, Taysir Batniji
[Fall 2009] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. Les petites nations Du 7 juin au 22 novembre 2009
Ciel variable 83 - MEDIUM : MAGAZINES | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Jean-François Bélisle | Artists: Atta Kim, Fiona Tan, Mark Lewis
[Fall 2009] June 7 to November 22, 2009 The constellation of temporary exhibitions, national representations, and thematic exhibitions that take over Venice for the first week of June every other year is usually a grand affair that defies any type of human scale. Surprisingly, that was largely untrue this year. Perhaps as a side effect […]
Ciel variable 83 - MEDIUM : MAGAZINES | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Sylvain Campeau | Artists: Thomas Kneubühler
[Fall 2009] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. Projex-Mtl Galerie, Montréal Du 30 avril au 20 juin 2009
Ciel variable 83 - MEDIUM : MAGAZINES | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Emily Falvey | Artists: Tony Fouhse
[Fall 2009] iPs Gallery Montreal June 6 to 27, 2009 Crack cocaine is the classic drug of addiction nightmares: it gets you high for five or ten minutes, and then haunts you for the rest of your life. The most addictive form of any drug, crack turns most of its users into dependents, the majority […]
Ciel variable 83 - MEDIUM : MAGAZINES | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Cyril Thomas | Artists: Harun Farocki, Rodney Graham
[Fall 2009] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. Jeu de Paume, Paris Du 7 avril au 7 juin 2009
Ciel variable 83 - MEDIUM : MAGAZINES | Exhibition reviews
Authors: James D. Campbell | Artists: Manon De Pauw
[Fall 2009] Galerie de l’UQAM, Montreal February 27 to March 28, 2009 Manon De Pauw practices a corporeal poetics as inventive and involute in its physical articulation as it is varied and inviting in its philosophical approach. Her manner of thinking the body – the “universal thing” – sheds light on the meaning of corporeality […]
Ciel variable 83 - MEDIUM : MAGAZINES | Essays
Authors: Maxime Coulombe | Artists: Joachim Koester
[Fall 2009] Joachim Koester photographs, and sometimes films, invisible events. Since the mid-1990s, he has sought out places that history seems to have touched, then deserted, and finally left to fade away. He sees himself as an archaeologist of the intangible, and thus he asks a question both beautiful and disturbing: Once an event is […]
Ciel variable 83 - MEDIUM : MAGAZINES | Essays
Authors: Zoë Tousignant
[Fall 2009] What images does the expression “photographic modernism in Canada” call to mind? If you are conversant with early-twentieth-century Canadian photography, the pictures of John Vanderpant, the Dutch-born Vancouver-based photographer who was the subject of an exhibition presented at the National Gallery of Canada in 1976, will likely be conjured. The photographic production of […]
Ciel variable 83 - MEDIUM : MAGAZINES | Portfolios
Authors: Adam Carr | Artists: Ron Terada
[Fall 2009] Defile (2003), by Ron Terada, is a single-issue artist’s magazine that deals with advertising as an intrinsic component of the art world: the magazine is composed exclusively of ads. Produced by Art Metropole and YYZ Books, this project featured the main art magazines from Canada and other countries in exchange for the publication […]
Ciel variable 83 - MEDIUM : MAGAZINES | Portfolios
Authors: Martha Langford | Artists: Michael Snow
[Fall 2009] Repeat Offender (1986), by Michael Snow, is a reprint, inverted and in black and white, of a Penthouse portfolio. First published in the now-defunct Toronto photography magazine Photo Communique, this project was produced upon invitation of Elke Town for an issue with the themes of mass mediation and appropriation. In the context of […]
Ciel variable 83 - MEDIUM : MAGAZINES | Portfolios
Authors: Anne Bénichou | Artists: Christian Boltanski
[Fall 2009] Signal (2004), by Christian Boltanski, is a series of colour plates taken from the magazine Signal, a propaganda organ of the Nazi regime issued bimonthly from April 1940 to March 1945 with a print run of 2.5 million copies. Excerpted from the original page sequences, these plates juxtapose portrayals of war and culture that […]
Ciel variable 83 - MEDIUM : MAGAZINES | Portfolios
Artists: Hans-Peter Feldmann
[Fall 2009] profil without words (2000), by Hans-Peter Feldmann, is a replica of a news magazine from which the text has been removed so that only the photographs remain, in their original sequence and positioning on the pages. Making the images talk for themselves, this project reveals the visual formatting of current affairs produced by […]
Ciel variable 83 - MEDIUM : MAGAZINES | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon | Artists: Christian Boltanski, Hans-Peter Feldmann, Michael Snow, Ron Terada
[Fall 2009] by Jacques Doyon What do the images in a magazine say? What is revealed by the reiteration of certain types of images – as well as their format, positioning, and grouping? Photographs are central to the definition of magazines, often equal in importance to textual content. For the image, the magazine goes beyond […]
[Fall 2009 – Winter 2010] Taken as a whole, what do the images that make up a magazine say? What do their format and positioning reveal? Artists appropriate, divert, or exaggerate the content and layout of existing magazines, seeking to make manifest how the image’s share of the page is structured and tease out […]
Ciel variable 82 – PUBLIC ART | Interviews
Authors: Gaëlle Morel, Jacques Doyon
[Summer 2009] Gaëlle Morel, guest curator for Le Mois de la Photo à Montréal 2009, is a member of the board of directors of the Société française de photographie and of the editorial committee of Études photographiques. She has published Le photoreportage d’auteur. L’institution culturelle de la photographie en France depuis les années 1970 (Paris: […]
Ciel variable 82 – PUBLIC ART | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Vincent Bonin | Artists: Silvia Kolbowski
[Summer 2009] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. Galerie Leonard et Bina Ellen, Montréal 30 janvier au 7 mars 2009
Ciel variable 82 – PUBLIC ART | Exhibition reviews
Authors: John K. Grande | Artists: Paul-Antoine Pichard
[Summer 2009] Galerie d’art du Centre Culturel Université de Sherbrooke January 12 to February 22, 2009 Previously exhibited at Cirque du Soleil’s TOHU Espace SSQ, Paul-Antoine Pichard’s photographs of people who live amid trash, in the scarred landscapes that they are a part of, reveal scarred, aged, disfigured victims of the conditions imposed on them […]
Ciel variable 82 – PUBLIC ART | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Sylvain Campeau | Artists: Carlos & Jason Sanchez
[Summer 2009] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. Maison des arts de Laval Du 27 septembre au 24 novembre 2008 Commissaire : Madeleine Therrien
Ciel variable 82 – PUBLIC ART | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Gary Michael Dault | Artists: Roger Ballen
[Summer 2009] OCAD Professional Gallery, Toronto March 5 – May 31, 2009 Everything is decay in Roger Ballen’s photographs: floors, walls, toothless mouths, and lank, rancid hair. Their only “beauty” (as we warily call it) – purloined from painterly, graffiti-wired photographs of the past (Siskind, Brassai, etc.) – is inventively and mercilessly imposed, in the […]
Ciel variable 82 – PUBLIC ART | Exhibition reviews
Authors: René Viau | Artists: Bas Jan Ader
[Summer 2009] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. Dazibao, centre de photographies actuelles, Montréal Du 8 janvier au 21 février 2009 Commissariat : France Choinière
Ciel variable 82 – PUBLIC ART | Exhibition reviews
Authors: James D. Campbell | Artists: Thomas Corriveau
[Summer 2009] Galerie Graff November 13 to December 20, 2008 We are living in a telematically attuned present tense. We are bombarded, even besieged, by endless streaming images and data feeds coming in from all sides, all the time. How we fend off the barrage or negotiate détente with it shapes the condition of our […]
Ciel variable 82 – PUBLIC ART | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Sylvain Campeau | Artists: Reno Salvail
[Summer 2009] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. Centre VU Du 10 octobre au 9 novembre 2008
Ciel variable 82 – PUBLIC ART | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Guy Sioui Durand | Artists: Arthur Renwick, Dana Claxton, Jeff Thomas, Shelley Niro
[Summer 2009] Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography at the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa October 31, 2008 – March 22, 2009 What if sacred masks and the geopolitical pomp of costumes had preceded posed portraits and scenes for the camera? Then, in the photographic gaze, not only would there be different works, but there would […]
Ciel variable 82 – PUBLIC ART | Essays
Authors: Martha Langford
[Summer 2009] The National Gallery of Canada (NGC), under the direction of Marc Mayer, has recently announced that the Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography (CMCP) will no longer occupy its building at 1 Rideau Canal. In fact, the building will no longer be a public space for the arts. It has been handed over to […]
Ciel variable 82 – PUBLIC ART | Essays
Authors: Stéphane Bouchard
[Summer 2009] by Stéphane Bouchard Of all the creative support programs, Quebec’s policy for the integration of the arts with architecture and the environment (commonly known as the 1 percent program) offers some of the best visibility, as well as terrific financial support, to artists. This program allots unequalled sums to bring contemporary art into […]
Ciel variable 82 – PUBLIC ART | Essays
Authors: Johanna Mizgala | Artists: Brian Merrett, David Miller, Laurie Kang, Louise Abbott, Nicholas Hoban, Notman & Sandham, William Notman, William Notman & Son, Zoe Yuristy
[Summer 2009] Relevance is a word that permeates discussions about the role of museums within the social fabric of community. As repositories, museums have a primary function of cultivation not only of objects but also of a public to engage with them. Museums amass, describe, preserve, and, ultimately, display facets of their contents, arranged and […]
Ciel variable 82 – PUBLIC ART | Essays
Authors: Stephen Horne | Artists: Ken Lum, Krzysztof Wodiczko, Rebecca Belmore
[Summer 2009] In Montreal, as in many cities around the world, works of art have often been placed in “public” urban spaces. In some cases, the placement of works is accomplished through channels of bureaucratic control or corporate interest, while in other cases artists have thought of their actions as interventions in those spheres, even […]
Ciel variable 82 – PUBLIC ART | Essays
Authors: Suzanne Paquet | Artists: Jean-François Cantin, Ken Lum, Michel Lemieux, Nicolas Baier, Thomas Kneubühler, Victor Pilon
[Summer 2009] The world identifies with the quintessence of photographs. This identification does not occur for no reason. For the world itself is composed of a photographic face. . . . the world has become the photographic present, and the photographic present is fully perpetuated. ⎯ Siegfried Kracauer, 19271 Although photographs are generally flat, they […]
Ciel variable 82 – PUBLIC ART | Portfolios
Authors: Patrice Loubier | Artists: Peter Gnass
[Summer 2009] Last autumn, Peter Gnass produced an intervention in the form of a temporary posting on the façades of a dozen Montreal cultural sites (galleries, museums, studios, art schools). The poster featured a long band of close-up pictures of ten statues, seen from the back, on which was superimposed a series of letters that […]
Ciel variable 82 – PUBLIC ART | Portfolios
Authors: Bernard Vallée, Pierre Anctil | Artists: ATSA
[Summer 2009] ATSA (Action terroriste socialement acceptable, or Socially Acceptable Terrorist Action), a collective founded in 1997 by artists Pierre Allard and Annie Roy, is well known for its public interventions. Every year since 1998, it has produced State of Emergency, an urban refugee camp for Montreal’s homeless. In general, the collective’s interventions question the […]
Ciel variable 82 – PUBLIC ART | Portfolios
Authors: Jacques Doyon | Artists: Adad Hannah, Alexandre Castonguay, Carlos & Jason Sanchez, Christophe Beauregard, Clara Gutsche, Denis Farley, Éric Tabuchi, Florian Böhm, Geneviève Cadieux, Isabelle Hayeur, Jessica Auer, Josée Pedneault, Marie-Jeanne Musiol, Max Wright, Neil Budzinski, Raymonde April, Roberto Pellegrinuzzi, Ron Terada, Suzanne Opton
[Summer 2009] by Jacques Doyon For several decades, contemporary art has been on display in the public spaces of Quebec’s urban areas, thanks to the creation of public art programs. Photography was long excluded from these programs, and even today it has limited visibility. Some initiatives have been undertaken in recent years, however, that stand […]
Ciel variable 82 – PUBLIC ART | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon
[Summer 2009] by Jacques Doyon This issue offers some preliminary observations on the presence of art photography in urban public art. When we think of “public art,” the governmental public art programs in effect in Quebec and Montreal for several decades immediately spring to mind. Photography, however, has not been well represented in these programs. […]
[Summer 2009] Although it is rarely installed as permanent public art, photography nevertheless has a growing presence within the urban public space. More and more artistic and institutional initiatives are encroaching on the territory of advertising – posting in all its forms – to dispute this high-visibility space and offer alternative ways of looking at […]
Ciel variable 81 - MADE IN CHINA | Interviews
Authors: Jacques Doyon | Artists: Antoni Muntadas
[Spring 2009] The internationally known artist Antoni Muntadas will present a new exhibition titled The Construction of Fear at Galerie SBC art contemporain in Montreal, from 28 February to 18 April 2009. Muntadas is interested in social, political, and communications issues, the relationship between public and private space within social frameworks, and the ways that channels […]
Ciel variable 81 - MADE IN CHINA | Book Reviews
Authors: Céline Dion
[Spring 2009] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.
Ciel variable 81 - MADE IN CHINA | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Cheryl Simon | Artists: Tim Clark
[Spring 2009] Leonard and Bina Ellen Art Gallery Concordia University, Montreal October 23–November 29, 2008 Curator: David Tomas, with the collaboration of Michèle Thériault and Eduardo Ralickas The commingling of academia and art in Tim Clark’s conceptual practice is announced at the outset of his recent retrospective exhibition with the installation of a small shelf […]
Ciel variable 81 - MADE IN CHINA | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Virginie Doré Lemonde | Artists: Olivier Asselin
[Spring 2009] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.
Ciel variable 81 - MADE IN CHINA | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Erin Silver | Artists: Molly Landreth
IPS gallery, Montreal November 1 – December 20, 2008 From Barack Obama’s gay-inclusive acceptance speech to the controversial passing of the Prop. 8 ban on gay marriage, the lives of gay Americans are, for better or for worse, on the public radar in the United States. Molly Landreth moves beyond party platforms and ballot boxes, embarking on […]
Ciel variable 81 - MADE IN CHINA | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Jacob Korczynski | Artists: Rivane Neuenschwander, Sharon Lockhart, Wolfgang Tillmans
[Spring 2009] Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, May 3, 2008–January 11, 2009 Despite fulfilling several different roles during its century-plus history, the Carnegie International exists today as a quadrennial exhibition of international contemporary art. This second-oldest exhibition of its kind opened just months after the first edition of the Venice Biennale, but today the Carnegie International is only […]
Ciel variable 81 - MADE IN CHINA | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Elitza Dulguerova | Artists: Johan Grimonprez, Köken Ergun
[Spring 2009] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. Galerie Leonard et Bina Ellen, Université Concordia 29 août au 11 octobre 2008 Commissaire : Séamus Kealy (Blackwood Gallery, Université de Toronto / Mississauga)
Ciel variable 81 - MADE IN CHINA | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Johanna Mizgala | Artists: Richard Misrach
[Spring 2009] Henry Art Gallery, Seattle, Washington 11 October 2008 – 18 January 2009 Over the past three decades, Richard Misrach has created a body of work that attempts to reconcile his two lifelong passions: a socio-political activism forged during his student days at Berkeley in the late 1960s and an affinity for images of […]
Ciel variable 81 - MADE IN CHINA | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Sylvain Campeau | Artists: Isabelle Hayeur, Ivan Binet, Mathieu Beauséjour, Patrick Altman
[Spring 2009] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. Centre VU, Québec 19 juin au 10 août 2008
Ciel variable 81 - MADE IN CHINA | Essays
Authors: Alexandre Robertson | Artists: Hughes Le Caine
[Spring 2009] “… a change in time is enough to re-create the world and ourselves.” — Marcel ProustDespite his pioneering role in the development of musique concrète, Hugh Le Caine (1914–77), a well-known physicist, inventor of electronic musical instruments, and self-taught composer, remains a relatively obscure figure: information about him is limited almost exclusively to […]
Ciel variable 81 - MADE IN CHINA | Essays
Authors: Elizabeth Matheson | Artists: Oscar Muñoz
[Spring 2009] We live in an age of disappearances, a time of loss and change, with mass extinctions and vanishing eco-regions. These profound, sinister planetary transformations remind us of the intimate link between ourselves and our actions in the visible world. Yet it seems as if this rapid unravelling has left us dumb with dread and […]
Ciel variable 81 - MADE IN CHINA | Portfolios
Authors: Sylvain Campeau | Artists: Yang Yi
[Spring 2009] In 2009, the Three Gorges Dam will have flooded hundreds of square kilometres in central China. Chinese artist Yang Yi will see his hometown, Kaixian, being submerged during the last phase of the project. Employing mastery of both photography and digital techniques, Yi shows us ghost towns engulfed by water whose inhabitants, fitted out […]