Ciel variable 77 – CULTURAL TOURISM | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Cyril Thomas | Artists: David Goldblatt
[Fall 2007] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. Galerie Marian Goodman, Paris, 4 mai – 16 juin 2007
Ciel variable 77 – CULTURAL TOURISM | Essays
Authors: Jacques Doyon
[Fall 2007] by Jacques Doyon This is the first part of our review of twenty years of Ciel variable. It offers an overview of the metamorphoses that the magazine has had over the years as photographic practices evolved, their field of application broadened, they were increasingly recognized by the art world, and their institutional environment […]
Ciel variable 77 – CULTURAL TOURISM | Essays
Authors: Sylvie Parent | Artists: Charles Pratt, Dan Phiffer, Don Sinclair, Kati London, Marketa Bankova, Mushon Zer-Aviv, Ran Tao, Thomas Duc
[Fall 2007] by Sylvie Parent An awareness of geography has never been totally absent from the Web. At first, however, it tended to be obscured behind utopian discourses on planetary connectivity. As the early enthusiasm about the Internet developed, regional places and specificities tended to become blurred. In recent years, though, free, user-friendly cartography tools […]
Ciel variable 77 – CULTURAL TOURISM | Portfolios
Authors: Michelle Kasprzak | Artists: Jessica Auer
[Fall 2007] Popular sites and tourism fascinate Jessica Auer. She has produced a series of photographic works that were shot in North and South America in which landscapes and architecture have been preserved, renovated, altered, or built from scratch for the benefit of tourism. Through novel perspectives and intriguing details, she invites viewers to appreciate […]
Ciel variable 77 – CULTURAL TOURISM | Portfolios
Authors: Alain Laframboise | Artists: Jana Sterbak
[Fall 2007] Produced in 2005–06, Waiting For High Water is the latest instalment of Jana Sterbak’s video projects with Stanley as camera-dog. Through a canine view of Venice, this work suggests a completely new perspective on this pre-eminent tourist destination. Exhibited as a triptych video projection, the edited video that resulted from the dog’s view […]
Ciel variable 77 – CULTURAL TOURISM | Portfolios
Authors: Reesa Greenberg | Artists: Antoni Muntadas, I Giardini
[Fall 2007] On Translation is an all-encompassing site-specific series of projects that Spanish artist Antoni Muntadas has been exhibiting since 1995. The 2005 instalment of the project – On Translation: I Giardini – was composed of a central interactive installation work, as well as photographic, video, and Web-based components. Produced on the occasion of Muntadas’s selection […]
Ciel variable 77 – CULTURAL TOURISM | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon
[Fall 2007] by Jacques Doyon Ciel variable is twenty years old! Over the years, the magazine has undergone several metamorphoses in order to better reflect the evolution in photographic practice, the broadening of its field of application, its recognition by the art world, and changes in its institutional environment. As the only bilingual photography magazine […]
[Winter 2007] Today’s global tourism industry has developed a cultural structure that orients how we see. The works presented here address various aspects of that structure and offer new perspectives on a global phenomenon. The subjects approached range from the political nature of the Venice Biennale to the recently acquired monumental status of certain sites. […]
Ciel variable 76 - MAPPING | Book Reviews, Readings
Authors: Jean-François Bélisle
[Summer 2007] Image and Inscription: An Anthology of Contemporary Canadian Photography [Robert Bean, ed.] (essays by Marie-Josée Jean, Blake Fitzparick, Robin Metcalfe, Carol Williams, Robert Enright, Vid Ingelevics, Lynne Bell, Jim Drobnick and Jennifer Fisher, Stephen Horne, and Robert Bean). Toronto: Gallery 44 and yyz Books, 2005. English texts. 232 pp., 121 colour and 37 […]
Ciel variable 76 - MAPPING | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Stephanie Gibson | Artists: Jeff Wall
[Summer 2007] Museum of Modern Art, New York February 25 – May 14, 2007 It is fitting that the Jeff Wall retrospective should be displayed on the sixth and top floor of the MoMA. For decades, photography collections had been relegated to the basement of museums. Photography, it was supposed, did not fit within the seamless narrative […]
Ciel variable 76 - MAPPING | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Sylvain Campeau | Artists: Michel Lamothe
[Summer 2007] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. Galerie Occurrence, Montréal du 20 janvier au 3 mars 2007
Ciel variable 76 - MAPPING | Exhibition reviews
Authors: James D. Campbell | Artists: Denis Farley, Lynne Cohen
[Summer 2007] Parisian Laundry, Montréal January 12 – February 24, 2007 This welcome, timely, and provocative exhibition of photographic works by Lynne Cohen and Denis Farley shed considerable light on their respective oeuvres in a truly dialogical fashion. Lynne Cohen’s photographs have never looked more seductive and unsettling than they do in the present exhibition. […]
Ciel variable 76 - MAPPING | Essays
Authors: Sylvie Parent | Artists: Isabelle Hayeur, Karen Trask
This article was originally published only in French. No translation is available. Summary In this essay, the author looks into photographic practices of recent years that use the fluid space of the World Wide Web as their production and exhibition medium, forgoing the static quality of printed images. The text presents a selection of works […]
Ciel variable 76 - MAPPING | Portfolios
Authors: Serge Bérard | Artists: Bill Vazan
[Summer 2007] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. Summary Since the end of the 1960s, Bill Vazan has been producing conceptual works in the form of urban itineraries for which he uses various modes of transportation (walking, driving, riding […]
Ciel variable 76 - MAPPING | Portfolios
Authors: Henry Lehmann | Artists: Bill Vazan
[Summer 2007] by Henry Lehmann The title was as brief and streamlined as the piece itself, called simply Worldline. With this unearthly 1971 project, based on the ultimate invisibility of pure line and on its infinite conceptual reach, Montreal artist Bill Vazan truly launched his career. Of course, most of this line, tangibly linked up […]
Ciel variable 76 - MAPPING | Portfolios
Authors: John K. Grande | Artists: David Maisel
[Summer 2007] David Maisel’s recent body of works, Black Maps, is composed of five series of aerial photographs, the subject of which is the undoing of the natural world by wide-scale human interventions. The latest of these series, Terminal Mirages – reproduced here – was shot from a helicopter flying above Great Salt Lake in Utah. In an […]
Ciel variable 76 - MAPPING | Portfolios
Authors: Jacques Doyon | Artists: Joan Fontcuberta
[Summer 2007] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. Joan Fontctuberta’s latest body of work, Datascape, is composed of two series: Orogenesis and Googlegrams. The first series was produced with software intended to produce photorealistic perspectives from topographical maps and […]
Ciel variable 76 - MAPPING | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon
[Summer 2007] by Jacques Doyon The works presented in this issue form conceptual mappings of territories in the midst of redefinition: the Internet, the natural environment, and circulation hubs. There is no cartography in the literal sense here; rather, these metaphorical mappings use the tools of cartography for investigations and approaches that examine our relationship […]
[Summer 2007]
Portfolios : JOAN FONTCUBERTA, DAVID MAISEL, BIL VAZAN.
Focus : Projets photographiques pour le web / Photographic Projects for the Web.
Reviews : Lynne Cohen, Denis Farley, Michel Lamothe, Jeff Wall, New and Worthy.
Authors : Jacques Doyon, Sylvain Campeau, John K. Grande, Henry Lehmann, Serge Bérard, Sylvie Parent, James D. Campbell, Stephanie Gibson, Jean-François Bélisle.
Ciel variable 75 - MUTATIONS | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Yam Lau | Artists: Alain Paiement
[Fall 2007] Biological Sciences Building, UQÀM, Montréal, inaugurated on December 6, 2006. A new public work by Alain Paiement was recently installed at the Université du Québec à Montréal. I met Paiement a few years ago. Since then, I have came to appreciate his photographic practice as being somewhat apart from the norm, from that […]
Ciel variable 75 - MUTATIONS | Exhibition reviews
Authors: John K. Grande | Artists: Fischli & Weiss
[Fall 2007] Tate Modern, London October 11, 2006 – January 14, 2007 Replicating the real, the Swiss duo of Fischli and Weiss play around with it all like so much spice cake. Since the 1970s, they have collaborated on numerous projects, and they have received their due recognition with this retrospective. Most often they fabricate meanings, or […]
Ciel variable 75 - MUTATIONS | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Petra Halkes | Artists: Michael Schreier
[Fall 2007] Patrick Mikhail Gallery, Ottawa October 2 – 26, 2006 A key image in Michael Schreier’s recent photo exhibition shows tourists jostling for space in front of Michelangelo’s Pieta. The famous sculpture is bathed in a golden light and clearly visible above the frantic crowd, which could not be more at odds with this emblem of […]
Ciel variable 75 - MUTATIONS | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Niki Lambros | Artists: Chris Marker
[Fall 2007] Dazibao, Montréal November 16 – December 14, 2006 What becomes history most? A credible witness. Even if the observer stands on the opposite shore, across an ocean of time, it is still possible to see into ruins and bear witness to a probable course of events for those who have long since become dust. Mnemosyne, […]
Ciel variable 75 - MUTATIONS | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Judith Parker | Artists: Gregory Crewdson, Michael Snow, Paul Outerbridge Jr., Yasumasa Morimura
[Fall 2007] National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa June 16 – October 1, 2006 The exhibition’s introductory panel included the statement, “In the last 20 years the staged photograph has occupied a prominent place in the broader world of contemporary art, straddling the borders that traditionally separated photography from other media.” Accordingly, Acting the Part: Photography as Theatre […]
Ciel variable 75 - MUTATIONS | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Marie-Josée Jean | Artists: Rodney Graham
[Fall 2007] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal du 7 octobre 2006 au 7 janvier 2007
Ciel variable 75 - MUTATIONS | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Maria Antonella Pelizzari | Artists: Adam Broomberg, Carlos & Jason Sanchez, Oliver Chanarin, Robert Adams
[Fall 2007] International Center of Photography, New York September 14, 2006–January 7, 2007 The debate over the effect of technology on the land has always been central to American photography and culture. In the nineteenth century, it was about the optimistic arrival of railroad tracks in the wilderness; in the early twentieth century, it was […]
Ciel variable 75 - MUTATIONS | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Sylvain Campeau | Artists: Alain Declercq
[Fall 2007] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. Centre Vox, Montréal du 9 septembre au 21 octobre 2006
Ciel variable 75 - MUTATIONS | Portfolios
Authors: Dayna McLeod | Artists: Paul Litherland
[Fall 2007] In Absolutely Fabulous, Paul Litherland playfully constructs stereotypical gender identities in himself, only to deconstruct them and raise his viewers’ awareness of cultural biases. The ten works that constitute this series evolved from a 1993 performance, Souvenirs. Each work is a self-portrait in which gendered clothing articles and props are used. In their […]
Ciel variable 75 - MUTATIONS | Portfolios
Authors: Maxime Coulombe | Artists: Orlan
[Fall 2007] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. Abstract The author argues that in order to fully understand Orlan’s Self-Hybridations series, one must return to her highly controversial series of performances, The Reincarnation of Sainte-Orlan. In this earlier series, […]
Ciel variable 75 - MUTATIONS | Portfolios
Authors: Martha Langford | Artists: Rafael Goldchain
[Fall 2007] Familial Ground is the product of a process that started several years ago when Rafael Goldchain’s son was born. Goldchain gradually realized that his new role as parent included the responsibility to pass on a familial and cultural inheritance. Familial Ground is an autobiographical installation work that includes digitally altered self-portrait photographs, reproductions […]
[Spring 2007]
Portfolios : RAPHAEL GOLDCHAIN, ORLAN, PAUL LITHERLAND.
Reviews : Alain Declercq, ECOTOPIA : Allegories of Disaster, Rodney Graham, Acting the Part : Photography as Theater, Chris Marker, Michael Schreier, Fischli & Weiss, Alain Paiement.
Authors : Martha Langford, Maxime Coulombe, Dayna McLeod, Sylvain Campeau, Maria Antonella Pelizzari, Marie-Josée Jean, Judith Parker, Niki Lambros, Petra Halkes, John K. Grande, Yam Lau.
[Winter 2006-2007] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.
Ciel variable 74 - LOGOS | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Ariane Noël de Tilly | Artists: Douglas Gordon
[Winter 2005-2006] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. Museum of Modern Art, New York du 11 juin au 4 septembre 2006
Ciel variable 74 - LOGOS | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Sylvain Campeau | Artists: Toni Hafkenschied
[Winter 2006-2007] 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 du 5 mai au 4 juin 2006
Ciel variable 74 - LOGOS | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Gary Michael Dault | Artists: Jennifer Campbell, Kate Greenslade, Lori Newdick, Mackenzie Stroh, Marisa Portolese
[Winter 2006-2007] Curated by Penny Cousineau-Levine Gallery 44 and Gallery TPW, Toronto September 14 – October 28, 2006 Loneliness, existential or otherwise, has been the informing condition of twentieth-century society, and it looks as if it will continue to be so in the twenty-first century. Penny Cousineau-Levine’s recent two-gallery exhibition, Alone, was a vivid, surprising, […]
Ciel variable 74 - LOGOS | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Charles Guilbert | Artists: Pascal Grandmaison
[Winter 2006-2007] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal du 27 mai au 9 octobre 2006
Ciel variable 74 - LOGOS | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Stéphane Baillargeon | Artists: Nicolas Baier
[Winter 2006-2007] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. Galerie René Blouin du 1er avril au 6 mai 2006
Ciel variable 74 - LOGOS | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Bruno Chalifour | Artists: David Goldblatt, Philippe Chancel, Raymond Depardon, Sophie Ristelhueber
[Winter 2006-2007] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. Arles du 4 juillet au 17 septembre 2006
Ciel variable 74 - LOGOS | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Dominique Fontaine | Artists: Nontsikelelo “lolo” Vekelo, Tracey Rose, Yto Barrada
[Winter 2006-2007] Cet article a été à l’origine uniquement publié en anglais. Vous pouvez le lire en consultant la version anglaise de cette page. International Center of Photography, New York du 15 mars au 28 mai 2006
Ciel variable 74 - LOGOS | Essays
Authors: Vincent Lavoie | Artists: George Merillon
[Winter 2006-2007] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. Abstract The World Press Photo grand prize, one of the most important distinctions awarded in the photojournalism field, has been handed out every year since 1955 to the person who makes […]
Ciel variable 74 - LOGOS | Portfolios
Authors: Gary Michael Dault | Artists: Frank Breuer
[Winter 2006-2007] Cologne-based photographer Frank Breuer is a virtuoso of profuse emptiness. His photographs of the bleak but strangely beautiful warehouses and of the logo-bearing, corporate, pylon-like signs that often stand nearby seem largely emptied of discursive, annotative meaning. Because both the warehouses and the emptied sign-structures that are his subject offer no internal articulation, […]
Ciel variable 74 - LOGOS | Portfolios
Authors: John K. Grande | Artists: Mike Yuhasz
[Winter 2006-2007] Multidisciplinary artist Mike Yuhasz’s Great North Development Group project explores the way we conceive of and relate to land in today’s complex world. Yuhasz’s confected, prearranged, set-up, and situational photographic and informational material carries contradictory and duplicitous messages about the consumer. The project is as much about our potential collective perception, understanding, and […]
Ciel variable 74 - LOGOS | Portfolios
Authors: Julie Lavigne | Artists: Mathieu Doyon, Simon Rivest
[Winter 2006-2007] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. Abstract Since they created their Doyon-Rivest “corporate” identity in 2000, artists Mathieu Doyon and Simon Rivest have been exploring the interrelationships between advertising and art, mimicking methods of advertising in order […]
Ciel variable 74 - LOGOS | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon
[Winter 2006-2007] by Jacques Doyon It is not surprising that the world of advertising has become an object of investigation and aesthetic appropriation for contemporary artists. Advertising has an important place in Western culture. It is omnipresent in the urban environment, and it literally inundates the communications media, in which it rivals news, entertainment, and […]
[Winter 2006-2007]
Portfolios : DOYON-RIVEST, MIKE YUHASZ, FRANK BREUER.
Focus : Le World Press Photo ou le photojournalisme au Salon.
Reviews : Contemporary African Photography, Les Rencontres d’Arles, Nicolas Baier, Pascal Grandmaison , Alone, Curated by Penny Cousineau-Levine, Toni Hafkenschied, Douglas Gordon.
Readings : Documentary Now!
Authors : Jacques Doyon, Julie Lavigne, John K. Grande, Vincent Lavoie, Dominique Fontaine, Bruno Chalifour, Stéphane Baillargeon, Charles Guilbert, Gary Michael Dault, Sylvain Campeau, Ariane Noël de Tilly, Vincent Bonin.
Ciel variable 73 - THEATRE OF MELANCHOLIA | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Michèle Cohen Hadria | Artists: Hala Elkoussy
[Fall 2006] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam du 2 avril au 14 mai 2006
Ciel variable 73 - THEATRE OF MELANCHOLIA | Exhibition reviews
Authors: SB Edwards | Artists: Maryse Larivière
[Fall 2006] Galerie Clark, Montreal March 9 – April 22, 2006 The rhythmic sound of waves lapping against the shore pervades the small back room of Galerie Clark in Montreal. It accompanies a wall-size video projection of a couple embracing tightly at the water’s edge. Only the young woman’s pale face is visible as she stares silently […]
Ciel variable 73 - THEATRE OF MELANCHOLIA | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Sylvain Campeau | Artists: Mark Ruwedel
[Fall 2006] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. Musée de Joliette du 12 février au 16 avril 2006
Ciel variable 73 - THEATRE OF MELANCHOLIA | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Ariane Noël de Tilly | Artists: BGL
[Fall 2006] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. Optica, Montréal du 28 avril au 3 juin 2006
Ciel variable 73 - THEATRE OF MELANCHOLIA | Exhibition reviews
Authors: David Balzer | Artists: David Maisel, John Ganis, Rita Leistner
[Fall 2006] Toronto May 1 – 31, 2006 The CONTACT Toronto Photography Festival’s tenth-anniversary theme was “Imaging a Global Culture,” a reasonable choice for a festival that, like the city that hosts it, likes to underscore perspectives from a range of locales, customs and ethnicities. The theme also has an optimistic, ingenuous ring to it, a possible […]
Ciel variable 73 - THEATRE OF MELANCHOLIA | Essays
Authors: Sharon Murray | Artists: Gabor Szilasi
[Fall 2006] What is less well known is that he photographed in Hungary around the time of his flight to Canada in 1957 and again during his return to Budapest more than twenty years later. Photography was fundamental to Szilasi’s experience: it acted as a means for him to both articulate and negotiate the disjunction […]
[Fall 2006] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. Abstract Since the nineteenth century, the rule for collecting photographic “landscapes” has allowed a certain “tyranny of the landscape” to endure and proliferate, making it so that the capturing of places […]
Ciel variable 73 - THEATRE OF MELANCHOLIA | Portfolios
Authors: James D. Campbell | Artists: Janita Eyre
[Fall 2006] With this recent series of photographs, Janieta Eyre continues her phantasmic exploration of her inner world, her psychic fantasies, and the twists and turns of her personality, distancing herself from the self-portrait and transposing her mises en scene into models. The torments and fears of childbirth are portrayed, with the shame of the […]
Ciel variable 73 - THEATRE OF MELANCHOLIA | Portfolios
Authors: Jean-Pierre Vidal | Artists: Matthieu Brouillard
[Fall 2006] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. Abstract With the real artificiality, the true “falseness,” of his images, Matthieu Brouillard eloquently captures the imagination while deflecting the spectator’s regard toward what must be called a reflection on the […]
Ciel variable 73 - THEATRE OF MELANCHOLIA | Portfolios
Authors: Cyril Thomas | Artists: Gregory Crewdson
[Fall 2006] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. Abstract The article outlines the career of Gregory Crewdson on the occasion of his retrospective at the Fotomuseum in Winterthur. Through an analysis of six photographic series, the author attempts to […]
Ciel variable 73 - THEATRE OF MELANCHOLIA | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon
[Fall 2006] by Jacques Doyon The images brought together in this issue fall under the rubric of the “staged” photography. They are inscribed within a current that has flowed throughout the history of photography, as the exhibition Acting the Part: Photography as Theatre, currently on at the National Gallery of Canada, brilliantly demonstrates. These practices […]
[Fall 2006]
Portfolios : GREGORY CREWDSON, MATTHIEU BROUILLARD, JANIETA EYRE.
Focus : La tyrannie paysagère, Gabor Szilasi’s photographs of Exile and Return.
Reviews : Imaging a global culture, CONTACT Photography Festival, BGL – Effet de mode et autres pirateries du genre, Mark Ruwedel, Maryse Larivière, Hala Elkoussy.
Authors : Jacques Doyon, Cyril Thomas, Jean-Pierre Vidal, James D. Campbell, Suzanne Paquet, Sharon Murray, David Balzer, Ariane Noël de Tilly, Sylvain Campeau, SB Edwards, Michèle Cohen Hadria.
Ciel variable 72 - PHOTO PERFORMANCE | Book Reviews, Readings
Authors: Anna Carlevaris | Artists: Diana Nemiroff, Doyon/Demers, Jan Peacock, Karen Henry, Rebecca Shneider
[Summer 2006] Point & Shoot Performance and Photography edited by France Choinière et Michèle Thériault Éditions Dazibao 2005 The latest in Galerie Dazibao’s series of publications on “hybrid” photographic practices introduces a timely subject: the relationship between photography and performance in Canadian art. Presented from both historical and theoretical perspectives, the collection of writings attempts […]
Ciel variable 72 - PHOTO PERFORMANCE | Exhibition reviews
Authors: James D. Campbell | Artists: Angela Grauerholz
[Summer 2006] VOX image contemporaine, Montreal January 28–March 18, 2006 There are two fantasmatic limits of the book to come, two extreme, final, eschatic figures of the end of the book, the end as death, or the end as telos and achievement. ⎯ Jacques Derrida, Paper Machine1 The archive unfolds in a lush, moving and […]
Ciel variable 72 - PHOTO PERFORMANCE | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Jessica Wyman | Artists: Laura Letinsky
[Summer 2006] Oakville Galleries January 28–March 26, 2006 Even an anonymous hotel room speaks volumes of its transient guest after only a few hours. A place inhabited by the same person for a certain duration draws a portrait that resembles this person based on objects (present or absent) and the habits that they imply.1 Several […]
Ciel variable 72 - PHOTO PERFORMANCE | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Johanna Mizgala | Artists: Sunil Gupta
[Summer 2006] Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography November 25, 2005–April 23, 2006 Sunil Gupta is a storyteller. In decided contrast to Cartier-Bresson’s “decisive moment,” Gupta opts to engage the viewer with photographs that act as a series of narrative spaces – they are clues to moments in time as opposed to ruptures of time – suggesting a sense that […]
Ciel variable 72 - PHOTO PERFORMANCE | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Christine Gauthier | Artists: Guy Blackburn
[Summer 2006] 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 8 décembre 2005 au 29 juin 2006
Ciel variable 72 - PHOTO PERFORMANCE | Exhibition reviews
Authors: James D. Campbell | Artists: Jennifer Long
[Summer 2006] La Centrale Galerie Powerhouse, Montreal 20 January–26 February 2006 The nine medium-scale colour photographs of women in this exhibition are akin to a searchlight focused on a troubling affliction of the heart that few today have not experienced at first hand: lover’s doubt. The images are powerfully interrogatory, offering an up-close and personal […]
Ciel variable 72 - PHOTO PERFORMANCE | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Suzanne Paquet | Artists: Sylvie Readman
[Summer 2006] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. Centre d’exposition Plein sud du 4 mars au 15 avril 2006 Centre d’exposition Expression du 18 mars au 23 avril 2006
Ciel variable 72 - PHOTO PERFORMANCE | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Maria Zimmermann Brendel | Artists: Shirin Neshat
[Summer 2006] Hamburger Bahnhof, Museum for Contemporary Art, Berlin October 1–December 4, 2005 Through poetry/art humans have survived. – Shirin Neshat Shirin Neshat’s chromatic single-channel projection Zarin (2005) had its premiere in Berlin. This 35 mm film, transferred to dvd, does not catapult viewers onto the seashore and into musical expanse – as does Passage – […]
Ciel variable 72 - PHOTO PERFORMANCE | Essays
Authors: Bruno Chalifour | Artists: Edward Burtynsky
[Summer 2006] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. Abstract This article addresses the new work by Edward Burtynsky as it was presented, in part, at the Brooklyn Museum of Art. In this exhibition, twenty-four images on contemporary China were […]
Ciel variable 72 - PHOTO PERFORMANCE | Portfolios
Authors: Hélène Brunet Neumann | Artists: Manon De Pauw
[Summer 2006] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. Abstract Manon De Pauw’s photographic and videographic work stands out for its ludic liveliness, the richness of its formal compositions, and its poetically evocative power. De Pauw explores the playful relationship […]
Ciel variable 72 - PHOTO PERFORMANCE | Portfolios
Authors: Guy Sioui Durand | Artists: Annie Baillargeon
[Summer 2006] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. Abstract In today’s generalized culture of screen images, new “nondisciplines” are entering the visual arts, media arts, action art, and art theory. Digital technologies, in particular, are multiplying in inventiveness and […]
Ciel variable 72 - PHOTO PERFORMANCE | Portfolios
Authors: Patrice Duhamel | Artists: Erwin Wurm
[Summer 2006] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. Abstract The situations in which Erwin Wurm involves us can be fully inscribed under the sign of potentiality. Beyond metaphysics, Wurm is interested in making the actual physique of bodies speak. […]
Ciel variable 72 - PHOTO PERFORMANCE | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon
[Summer 2006] by Jacques Doyon Instructions: define a field of operations that is compatible with the camera’s field, determine the procedures for choosing objects and the type of actions to produce, decide on a duration, insert a body into the recording field, perform the planned manipulations or interactions, and then re-evaluate the results of the […]
[Summer 2006]
Portfolios : ERWIN WURM, ANNIE BAILLARGEON, MANON DE PAUW.
Focus :Edward Burtynsky – L’oeil d’un coloriste sur le sublime contemporain.
Reviews : Shirin Neshat, Sylvie Readman, Jennifer Long, Guy Blackburn, Sunil Gupta, Laura Letinsky, Angela Grauerholz, Point & Shoot, Performance and Photography.
Authors : Jacques Doyon, Patrice Duhamel, Guy Sioui Durand, Hélène Brunet Neumann, Bruno Chalifour, Maria Zimmermann Brendel, Suzanne Paquet, James D. Campbell, Christine Gauthier, Johanna Mizgala, Jessica Wyman, Anna Carlevaris.
Ciel variable 71 - IMAGE WORLD | Book Reviews, Readings
Authors: Gary Michael Dault | Artists: Thaddeus Holownia
[Spring 2006] Arborealis Thaddeus Holownia Anchorage Press 2005 The panoramic format in photography simultaneously poses delicate problems and offers sumptuous opportunities. The problems tend to centre around compositional matters – the way that the image, often more than twice as wide as it is high, is usually informed either by a conventional recourse to the […]
[Spring 2006] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. Controlled Disturbance, Donigan Cumming Montréal, Vidéographe Coffret DVD 2005
[Spring 2006] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. Feintes_ doutes + fictions Réflexions sur la photographie numérique Québec, éditions J’ai VU 2005
Ciel variable 71 - IMAGE WORLD | Book Reviews, Readings
Authors: Vincent Lavoie | Artists: Martha Rosler
[Spring 2006] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. Covering the Real Art and the Press Picture from Warhol to Tillmans Kunstmuseum Basel DuMont Literatur und Kunst Verlag 2005
Ciel variable 71 - IMAGE WORLD | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Kevin Temple | Artists: Mathieu Doyon, Simon Rivest
[Spring 2006] Doyon-Rivest thanks for being there October 27–November 26, 2005 Gallery TPW The work of Doyon-Rivest asks the simple question, If the world of advertising can exploit art and artists for financial benefit, then why can’t artists appropriate the tools of advertising in their art practice? When you set aside the alleged lofty goals […]
Ciel variable 71 - IMAGE WORLD | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Cyril Thomas | Artists: Jeff Wall
[Spring 2006] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. Tate Modern, Londres du 21 octobre 2005 au 8 janvier 2006
Ciel variable 71 - IMAGE WORLD | Exhibition reviews
Authors: James D. Campbell | Artists: Diana Thorneycroft
[Spring 2006] The Canadiana Martyrdom Series Galerie Art Mûr, Montreal November 17 – December 21, 2005 I make of Her an image of Death so as not to be shattered through the hatred I bear against myself when I identify with Her. . . . Thus the feminine as image of death is not only […]
Ciel variable 71 - IMAGE WORLD | Essays
Authors: Jean-François Bélisle | Artists: Lynne Cohen
[Spring 2006] by Jean-François Bélisle Since the early 1970s, Cohen has lived and worked in no fewer than nine countries, photographing unpopulated interiors in public and private establishments such as schools, spas, and laboratories. Her practice has been informed by her nomadic lifestyle. Her mostly black-and-white images may seem to be documentations of specific awkward […]
Ciel variable 71 - IMAGE WORLD | Portfolios
Authors: Dieter Roelstraete | Artists: Roy Arden
[Spring 2006] by Dieter Roelstraete In The World as Will and Representation, his first-ever online/Internet art project, acclaimed Vancouver artist Roy Arden returns to the archival tropes, modes, and motifs that helped give decisive shape to his landmark works from the mid-1980s, the best known of which are the Rupture, Abjection, and Mission “series” or […]
Ciel variable 71 - IMAGE WORLD | Portfolios
Artists: Roy Arden
[Spring 2006] Roy Arden’s piece presents a kaleidoscopic flux of some 10,000 images extracted from the web, depicting different manifestations of the concrete world. Structured around arbitrary entries, it deploys so many numerous variations that we are left in a state of amazement and confusion. By Roy Arden I have collected images since I was […]
Ciel variable 71 - IMAGE WORLD | Portfolios
Authors: André-Louis Paré | Artists: Emmanuelle Léonard, Sean Reuthler
[Spring 2006] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. Abstract The author bases himself on Michel Foucault’s analysis of Jeremy Bentham’s Panopticon to examine the works of Emmanuelle Léonard – more specifically, the video installation Guardia, resguárdeme (Guard, protect me), […]
Ciel variable 71 - IMAGE WORLD | Portfolios
Authors: Alice Ming Wai Jim | Artists: Chih-Chien Wang
[Spring 2006] The piece, initially presented at Dazibao, covered the entire walls of the gallery with dozens of images and two video works. Each photography is like a suspended moment in time, extracted from a continuous flux in which perception, memory and culture intermingle to create a personal trajectory and identity. Newspaper Wrap, on the […]
Ciel variable 71 - IMAGE WORLD | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon
[Spring 2006] by Jacques Doyon In this issue, we feature works that, in their profusion and scope, offer a glimpse at the condition of the world as it is manifested and revealed through the mechanisms for fabrication and circulation of images. These image systems are of different dimensions, ranging from identity as it is defined […]
[Spring 2006]
Portfolios : CHIH-CHIEN WANG, EMMANUELLE LÉONARD, ROY ARDEN.
Focus : (Un)framing Interior Views Cultural Geography in the Work of Lynne Cohen.
Reviews : Diana Thorneycroft, Jeff Wall, Doyon-Rivest, Covering the Real, Feintes_ doutes + fictions, Donigan Cumming – Controlled Disturbance, Arborealis.
Authors : Jacques Doyon, Alice Ming Wai Jim, André-Louis Paré, Roy Arden, Dieter Roelstraete, Jean-François Bélisle, James D. Campbell, Cyril Thomas, Kevin Temple, Vincent Lavoie, Vincent Bonin, Sylvain Campeau, Gary Michael Dault.
Ciel variable 70 - MATERIA ET LUMEN | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Serge Bérard | Artists: Christian Barré, Emmanuelle Léonard, Isabelle Hayeur, Martin Désilets, Myriam Yates, Pavel Pavlov
[Winter 2005-2006] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. Musée d’art contemporain Montréal 7 octobre 2005 au 8 janvier 2006
Ciel variable 70 - MATERIA ET LUMEN | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Cyril Thomas | Artists: Araki Nobuyoshi
This article was originally published only in French. No translation is available. Palais de Tokyo Paris 8 octobre 2005
Ciel variable 70 - MATERIA ET LUMEN | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Serge Bérard | Artists: Iain Baxter&, N.E. Thing Co.
[Winter 2005-2006] 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 Montréal 10 septembre au 22 octobre 2005
Ciel variable 70 - MATERIA ET LUMEN | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Ann Thomas | Artists: Dieter Appelt
[Winter 2005-2006] Canadian Centre for Architecture March 9–May 22, 2005 Ever since Dieter Appelt dedicated his career to making photographs in the early 1970s, he has addressed ontological issues relating to the nature of life, death, and the transmission of experience and memory. He has done this not only by developing complex sequencing structures for […]
Ciel variable 70 - MATERIA ET LUMEN | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Anna Carlevaris | Artists: Adad Hannah, Diane Borsato, Michael Snow, Mike Yuhasz, Polixeni Papapetrou, Rafael Goldchain
[Winter 2005-2006] Le mois de la photo à Montréal September 8–October 10, 2005 Montreal’s biennial of photography marks its ninth edition this year under the artistic stewardship of Martha Langford, founding director and former chief curator of the Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography (1983–94). It takes someone with Langford’s expertise to curate what has become […]
Ciel variable 70 - MATERIA ET LUMEN | Portfolios
Authors: Lisanne Nadeau | Artists: Paul Lacroix
[Winter 2005-2006] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. Abstract All of Paul Lacroix’s works are imbued with his fascination with the marking of a vast, luminous surface of paper. From drawing to photogram, he attracts us with an unvarying, […]
Ciel variable 70 - MATERIA ET LUMEN | Portfolios
Authors: Ann Thomas | Artists: Claudia Fährenkemper
[Winter 2005-2006] German photographer Claudia Fährenkemper’s powerful black and white photomicrographs are a contemporary expression of the centuries-old human need to know what lies beneath the surface of things. Taken with a scanning electron microscope, her photographs of insects, crystals and planktons provide a sensual encounter with the microcosm and its morphology that lead to […]
Ciel variable 70 - MATERIA ET LUMEN | Portfolios
Authors: Sylvain Campeau | Artists: Marie-Jeanne Musiol
[Winter 2005-2006] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. Abstract Campeau examines the scope and consequences of what seems to be implied by the possibility that objects can produce their own visible radiation, thereby challenging the very notion of photographic […]
Ciel variable 70 - MATERIA ET LUMEN | Portfolios
Authors: James D. Campbell | Artists: Michael Flomen
[Winter 2005-2006] Michael Flomen’s works encompass an abstract, oneiric space that we cannot easily reference, for it is openly ambiguous, hovering somewhere between the dream and the waking moment. Whether rain and snowfalls registering at night on handmade photograms (Teeming), the evidentiary bioluminescence of fireflies caught on photographic flypaper in the dead of night as […]
Ciel variable 70 - MATERIA ET LUMEN | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon
[Winter 2005-2006] by Jacques Doyon Seeing better, seeing farther; disrupting the representation, dissolving it: these approaches seem contradictory. Yet, paradoxically, they hew to a single frontier: that of the visible and representable, that of the limit of our capacity to see and our perceptual expectations. They meet in a common exploration of light as a […]
[Winter 2005-2006]
Portfolios : MICHAEL FLOMEN, MARIE-JEANNE MUSIOL, CLAUDIA FÄHRENKEMPER, PAUL LACROIX.
Reviews : Le mois de la photo à Montréal: Image and Imagination, Dieter Appelt Forth Bridge – Cinema. Metric Space, Iain Baxter&, Nobuyoshi Araki, Territoires urbains.
Authors : Jacques Doyon, James D. Campbell, Sylvain Campeau, AnnThomas, Lisanne Nadeau, Anna Carlevaris, Ann Thomas, Serge Bérard, Cyril Thomas, Serge Bérard.
Ciel variable 69 – BEHOLDING THE CITY | Book Reviews, Readings
Authors: Gary Michael Dault | Artists: Peter MacCallum
[Fall 2005] Peter MacCallum:Material World YYZ Books and Museum London 2004 Since the late 1960s, Toronto photographer Peter MacCallum has been devoting a great deal of his time to documenting the work of other visual artists. It has been a long, exacting sojourn in alternate sensibilities that might well have exhausted anyone less determined than […]
Ciel variable 69 – BEHOLDING THE CITY | Book Reviews, Readings
Authors: Pavel Pavlov | Artists: David Tomas
[Fall 2005] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. David Tomas:A Blinding Flash of Light Photography Between Disciplines and Media Dazibao 2004
Ciel variable 69 – BEHOLDING THE CITY | Book Reviews, Readings
Authors: Johanna Mizgala | Artists: Emmanuelle Léonard
[Fall 2005] Emmanuelle Léonard : Un livre de photographies Montréal, Occurrence 2005 Emmanuelle Léonard has exhibited a growing body of work since 1996, steadily evolving into a contemporary photographer whose next project is eagerly anticipated. Her complex images not only explore the theoretical terrain between photographer, subject, and viewer, but also serve to disentangle pervasively […]
Ciel variable 69 – BEHOLDING THE CITY | Book Reviews, Readings
Authors: Vincent Lavoie
[Fall 2005] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. André Rouillé : La photographie Paris, Gallimard 2005
Ciel variable 69 – BEHOLDING THE CITY | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Jean-François Bélisle | Artists: Caio Reisewitz, George Hadjimichalis, Natalija Vujosevic, Oscar Muñoz, Rebecca Belmore
[Fall 2005] Venice, Italy June 12 – November 6, 2005 The cutting edge of today’s art ought to be the stuff of tomorrow, or so the contemporary belief goes. A visit to the fifty-first edition of the Venice Biennale highlights the importance and complexity of the relationship between the two elements of this belief: time […]
Ciel variable 69 – BEHOLDING THE CITY | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Kim Simon | Artists: Jennifer Givogue
[Fall 2005] Prefix Institute of Contemporary Art, Toronto May 5–June 11, 2005 Photographer and curator Vid Ingelevics is becoming known for his smart and poetic exhibitions. His installations often form wonderful intertexts, implicitly exploring the complex relationship between photography, its institutions of collection and dissemination, and the production and retention of knowledge. On its surface, […]
Ciel variable 69 – BEHOLDING THE CITY | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Donigan Cumming | Artists: David Balzer
[Fall 2005] April 9–May 22, 2005 Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art The word “harrowing” readily pops to mind when viewing Donigan Cumming’s work. This word has broad, stock associations with both individual and empathic suffering: a lengthy battle with an illness, one’s experience nursing a friend through an illness, and, perhaps most oddly, an affecting, […]
Ciel variable 69 – BEHOLDING THE CITY | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Vincent Bonin | Artists: John Oswald
[Fall 2005] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal du 7 avril au 14 août 2005
Ciel variable 69 – BEHOLDING THE CITY | Portfolios
Authors: Jessica Wyman | Artists: Cheryl Sourkes
[Fall 2005] Cheryl Sourkes has been surfing and capturing webcam images for several years, and her work serves to articulate for viewers some of the ponderous questions that emerge in seeing the world differently through this particular technology. Sourkes’s current practice is not one of making images so much as it is one of selecting […]
Ciel variable 69 – BEHOLDING THE CITY | Portfolios
Authors: Alain Laframboise | Artists: Pierre Granche
[Fall 2005] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. Abstract Highlighting the similarities between the convex mirror used by Pierre Granche in his series of photographs and Parmigianino’s Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror (1524), the mirror that Brunelleschi used in […]
Ciel variable 69 – BEHOLDING THE CITY | Portfolios
Authors: Johanne Sloan | Artists: SYN–
[Fall 2005] By Johanne Sloan SYN–’s Prospectus (2003–04)1 points to contradictions in the relationship between contemporary artists and the city. This sequence of eighty-one photographs shows the SYN– members wandering around and engaged in play at various locations in the “hyperbuilding” otherwise known as Montreal’s underground city. Their sensibility might be akin to that of […]
Ciel variable 69 – BEHOLDING THE CITY | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon
[Fall 2005] by Jacques Doyon This issue is about our ways of apprehending, representing, and acting in the contemporary city. The works presented here are all characterized by the inclusion within the images of a multiplicity of points of view and a distinct process of observation. They examine different aspects of an urbanity that is […]
[Fall 2005]
Portfolios : SYN-, PIERRE GRANCHE, CHERYL SOURKES.
Reviews : Instandstillnessence, Donigan Cumming – Moving Pictures, Damage Done. Materializing the Photographic Image, The Venice Biennale : 51st International Art Exhibition.
Readings : André Rouillé, Emmanuelle Léonard, David Tomas, Peter MacCallum.
Authors : Jacques Doyon, Johanne Sloan, Alain Laframboise, Jessica Wyman, Vincent Bonin, David Balzer, Kim Simon, Jean-François Bélisle, Johanna Mizgala, Vincent Lavoie, Pavel Pavlov, Gary Michael Dault.
Ciel variable 68 – MEMORIES OF THE DISASTER | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Natalie Olanick | Artists: Karen Henderson
[Summer 2005] Optica Centre for Contemporary Arts, Montréal March 5 to April 9, 2005 There has always been a quiet elegance to Karen Henderson’s works. The artist, generally working with photo-based installations, is interested in the creation of carefully executed, labour-intensive works, in which consideration of the materials used moves beyond the object itself and […]
Ciel variable 68 – MEMORIES OF THE DISASTER | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Sylvain Campeau | Artists: Eve K. Tremblay, Michel de Broin
[Summer 2005] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. Honeymoons Pierre-François Ouellette Art contemporain, Du 6 novembre au 18 décembre 2004
Ciel variable 68 – MEMORIES OF THE DISASTER | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Johanna Mizgala | Artists: Thomas Demand
[Summer 2005] The Museum of Modern Art, New York 4 March – 30 May, 2005 Looking at one of Thomas Demand’s photographs of a carefully replicated environment provokes a strange sensation of simultaneous recognition and disavowal. The composition contains familiar objects, and it seems familiar because it stems from seeing a similar image in another […]
Ciel variable 68 – MEMORIES OF THE DISASTER | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Suzanne Paquet | Artists: Claude-Philippe Benoît
[Summer 2005] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. Galerie Lilian Rodriguez Du 19 mars au 23 avril 2005
Ciel variable 68 – MEMORIES OF THE DISASTER | Portfolios
Authors: Johanna Mizgala | Artists: Denis Farley
[Summer 2005] In his Irradiations series as in his earlier works, Denis Farley partakes in an ongoing investigation of the nature of photography as a self-conscious gesture. In a string of works produced following a site-specific group exhibition in the Canadian government’s once top-secret underground bunker, and now a decommissioned relic of the Cold War, […]
Ciel variable 68 – MEMORIES OF THE DISASTER | Portfolios
Authors: Octave Debary | Artists: Liza Nguyen
[Summer 2005] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. Abstract What meaning should be given to the commemoration of the thirtieth anniversary of the fall of Saigon? This text analyzes how Souvenirs du Vietnam, a work by Liza Nguyen, offers […]
Ciel variable 68 – MEMORIES OF THE DISASTER | Portfolios
Authors: Gary Michael Dault | Artists: Bertrand Carrière
[Summer 2005] In three recent interrelated works, Bertrand Carrière explores ways of expressing the memories embedded in the landscape at the site of the Dieppe Raid of 1942. The Caux series constitutes a long meditation on the sense of purposelessness and loss embodied by that very landscape. It was preceded by Jubilee, an installation in […]
Ciel variable 68 – MEMORIES OF THE DISASTER | Portfolios
Authors: Anne Bénichou | Artists: Melvin Charney
[Summer 2005] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. Abstract In the early 1970s, Melvin Charney began a work in progress, UN DICTIONNAIRE…, a collection of press-agency photographs, published in newspapers, in which buildings and cities involved in current events […]
Ciel variable 68 – MEMORIES OF THE DISASTER | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon
[Summer 2005] by Jacques Doyon The works in this issue fall under the sign of things that are beyond comprehension. The list of catastrophic events that have left bitter traces on our democratic ideals in the last half-century is long. Current events dealt with in contemporary visual arts bring to mind some of these unimaginable […]
[Summer 2005]
Portfolios : MELVIN CHARNEY, BERTRAND CARRIÈRE, LIZA NGUYEN, DENIS FARLEY.
Reviews : Claude-Philippe Benoît, Thomas Demand, Karen Henderson, Michel de Broin et Ève K. Tremblay.
Authors : Jacques Doyon, Anne Bénichou, Gary Michael Dault, Octave Debary, Johanna Mizgala, Suzanne Paquet, Johanna Mizgala, Sylvain Campeau, Natalie Olanick.
Ciel variable 67 - STILL MOVING | Book Reviews, Readings
Authors: Sylvain Campeau
[Spring 2005] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. Autoportraits dans la photographie canadienne contemporaine Éditions J’ai Vu, collection L’opposite, Québec, 2004, 111 p.