New Entries

Here, you’ll find new articles added each week to our archives. Every year, three previous issues of the magazine are made accessible in their integrality, one article at the time.

Note that you can also access all of these articles through the sections and categories that structure the Ciel variable website.

Intimate Portraits — James D. Campbell

Ciel variable 113 - TRANS-IDENTITIES | Exhibition reviews
Authors: James D. Campbell | Artists: Andrea Szilasi

April 23, 2024 [originally published in CV113 in Fall 2019] — By James D. Campbell. Intimate Portraits brought together works by four artists whose preoccupation with the human body is a longstanding one: Donigan Cumming, JJ Levine, George Steeves, and Andrea Szilasi. Their works interrogate the nature of portraiture itself…

Denis Rioux, D’abord, ne pas photographier — Fanny Bieth et Clément Willer

Ciel variable 113 - TRANS-IDENTITIES | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Clément Willer, Fanny Bieth | Artists: Denis Rioux

April 16, 2024 [originally published in CV113 in Fall 2019] — This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.

Guy Tillim — Érika Nimis

Ciel variable 113 - TRANS-IDENTITIES | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Erika Nimis | Artists: Guy Tillim

April 4, 2024 [originally published in CV113 in Fall 2019] — This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.

Myriam Jacob-Allard, T’envoler — Charles Guilbert

Ciel variable 113 - TRANS-IDENTITIES | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Charles Guilbert | Artists: Myriam Jacob-Allard

March 22, 2024 [originally published in CV113 in Fall 2019] — This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.

Ansley West Rivers — Ariane Noël de Tilly

Ciel variable 113 - TRANS-IDENTITIES | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Ariane Noël de Tilly | Artists: Ansley West Rivers

March 22, 2024 [originally published in CV113 in Fall 2019] — This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.

Martin Bureau. Borders and Walls — Sophie Bertrand

Ciel variable 113 - TRANS-IDENTITIES | Essays
Authors: Sophie Bertrand | Artists: Martin Bureau

March 7, 2024 [originally published in CV113 in Fall 2019] — Par Sophie Bertrand. “The number of walls has tripled since the Cold War, and it has kept growing since 2001; it now consists of almost 30,000 km of armed borders.”¹ This observation, made in 2013 by the researchers of the Chaire Raoul-Dandurand en études stratégiques et diplomatiques at the Université du Québec à Montréal, during a conference on issues around walled borders, conveys much more than a malaise inherited from history…

CONTACT 2019. Violence — Jill Glessing

Ciel variable 113 - TRANS-IDENTITIES | Essays
Authors: Jill Glessing | Artists: Carrie Mae Weems

February 28, 2023 [originally published in CV113 in Fall 2019] — By Jill Glessing. Violence runs through our lives, experienced directly or through media representations. We are subject to its power to varying degrees depending on our geographical location, race, class, gender, and access to high-speed internet. We are well acquainted with the variety of ways that humans inflict harm – whether physical, social, or psychological – upon one another…

About the Face: The Photographs of Dave Heath — Pierre Dessureault

Ciel variable 113 - TRANS-IDENTITIES | Essays
Authors: Pierre Dessureault

February 13, 2024 [originally published in CV113 in Fall 2019] — By Pierre Dessureault. In a body of work accumulated over more than sixty years, Dave Heath (1931–2016), a Canadian photographer born in the United States, challenged the qualities of the photographic medium and its techniques. He constantly probed, through images, Montaigne’s dictum that “every man carries the entire form of the human condition.”¹…

Luigi Ghirri. Flatness and Its Frame — Stephen Horne

Ciel variable 113 - TRANS-IDENTITIES | Essays
Authors: Stephen Horne | Artists: Luigi Ghirri

February 6, 2024 [originally published in CV113 in Fall 2019] — By Stephen Horne. The Map and The Territory is a large and intricate exhibition of colour photographs by the late Italian artist Luigi Ghirri at the Jeu de Paume in Paris.¹ No doubt the curator of the exhibition, James Lingwood, adopted this title following up on a note that Ghirri wrote in 1970 in which he explained that “his aim was not to make photographs, but rather charts and maps.”²…

Erasmus Schröter, Contest — Andreas Höll, A Crisis of Masculinity? The Gradual Liquefaction of Identities

Ciel variable 113 - TRANS-IDENTITIES | Portfolios
Artists: Erasmus Schröter

November 15, 2023 [originally published in CV113 in Fall 2019] — By Andreas Höll. Our image of the world has always been very fragile, and it has severely jolted on several occasions. Sigmund Freud, for example, cited the three insults to humanity that overturned our view of the world: Copernicus expected us to believe that we weren’t at the centre of the universe; Darwin proved we were descended from apes and warned us not to assume we were the pinnacle of creation; and Freud himself revealed that, following the discovery of the unconscious, we were no longer master even in our own house…

JJ Levine, Family — Charles Guilbert, Beyond Borders

Ciel variable 113 - TRANS-IDENTITIES | Portfolios
Authors: Charles Guilbert | Artists: JJ Levine

November 8, 2023 [originally published in CV113 in Fall 2019] — By Charles Guilbert. What strikes the eye in JJ Levine’s work is a unique way of challenging gender norms. But when we look more closely, we discover that Levine wants to erase many borders – in both photography practice and in addressing subjects such as family, time, and space…

Kent Monkman, Miss Chief Eagle Testickle — Dayna McLeod, Disrupting Colonial Comforts and Settler Sensibilities

Ciel variable 113 - TRANS-IDENTITIES | Portfolios
Authors: Dayna McLeod | Artists: Kent Monkman

October 25, 2023 [originally published in CV113 in Fall 2019] — By Dayna McLeod. Miss Chief Eagle Testickle is the muse and alter ego of Kent Monkman, a Cree artist who confronts the violent and systemic consequences of colonialism on Indigenous peoples in North America, with attention to Canada and Quebec.

New & Worthy

Ciel variable 112 - COLLECTIONS REVISITED | Book Reviews

October 18, 2023 [originally published in CV112 in Summer 2019] — From June 2018 to September 2019, the project The Work of Wind: Air, Land, Sea is offering a series of exhibitions, publications, and public events in Mississauga, Ontario, based on the Beaufort Scale of Wind Force. Organized by Christine Shaw, director of and curator at the Blackwood Gallery, the undertaking challenges the complexity of the current environmental crisis through the prism of art practices and social, cultural, and political mobilizations…

Martha Rosler, Irrespective — Ariane Noël de Tilly

Ciel variable 112 - COLLECTIONS REVISITED | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Ariane Noël de Tilly | Artists: Martha Rosler

September 6 2023 [originally published in CV112 in Summer 2019] — This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page…

Basma Alsharif — Jill Glessing

Ciel variable 112 - COLLECTIONS REVISITED | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Jill Glessing | Artists: Basma Alsharif

August 16, 2023 [originally published in CV112 in Summer 2019] — By Jill Glessing. Basma Alsharif asks a question for our time. Increasing human migration prompted by wars and climate change means, for many, an experience of cultural displacement. Born in Kuwait to Palestinian refugee parents who had ﬂed Israeli occupation, Alsharif migrated ﬁrst to France then to the United States…

Valérian Mazataud, Grand Nord — Sophie Bertrand

Ciel variable 112 - COLLECTIONS REVISITED | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Sophie Bertrand

August 2, 2023 — This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.

Velibor Božović, In seeing, there is no right no wrong — Sylvain Campeau

Ciel variable 112 - COLLECTIONS REVISITED | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Sylvain Campeau | Artists: Velibor Božović

June 28, 2023 — This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.

Thomas Kneubühler, Absence | Landing Sites — Patrick Brian Smith

Ciel variable 112 - COLLECTIONS REVISITED | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Patrick Brian Smith | Artists: Thomas Kneubühler

June 21 2023 [originally published in CV112 in Summer 2019] — Thomas Kneubühler has always been concerned with developing new ways of visualizing – and critiquing – power formations and their related infrastructures in the late-capitalist, globalized world…

Denis Farley, Aux confins du visible — Fanny Bieth

Ciel variable 112 - COLLECTIONS REVISITED | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Fanny Bieth | Artists: Denis Farley

June 14, 2023 [originally published in CV112 in Summer 2019] — This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.

Vincent Meessen, Blues Klair — Érika Nimis

Ciel variable 112 - COLLECTIONS REVISITED | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Erika Nimis | Artists: Vincent Meessen

June 7 2023 [originally published in CV112 in Summer 2019] — This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.

Elena Perlino — Claudia Polledri

Ciel variable 112 - COLLECTIONS REVISITED | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Claudia Polledri | Artists: Elena Perlino

April 26 2023 [originally published in CV112 in Summer 2019] — This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.

Julian Rosefeldt — James Campbell

Ciel variable 112 - COLLECTIONS REVISITED | Exhibition reviews
Authors: James D. Campbell | Artists: Julian Rosefeldt

April 19, 2023 [originally published in CV112 in Summer 2019] — By James Campbell. Whether playing a senior CIA agent (Hanna, 2011), Elf Queen Galadriel (The Lord of the Rings, 2001 2002, 2003), or a formerly rich New York socialite on the move (Blue Jasmine, 2013), Cate Blanchett has demonstrated her acting chops and established herself as one of the wiliest and most brilliant chameleons in contemporary cinema…

Nathan Lyons, An Exploration of Photography as Visual Language — Bruno Chalifour

Ciel variable 112 - COLLECTIONS REVISITED | Essays
Authors: Bruno Chalifour | Artists: Nathan Lyons

April 12, 2023 [originally published in CV112 in Summer 2019] — By Bruno Chalifour. Some two years after Nathan Lyons’s death, on August 30, 2016, the George Eastman Museum (GEM) is presenting an overview of the life’s work of one of the central inﬂuencers of American photography in the second half of the twentieth century…

Anthropocene Fatigue: Edward Burtynsky’s Strategy of Collapse — Bénédicte Ramade

Ciel variable 112 - COLLECTIONS REVISITED | Essays
Authors: Bénédicte Ramade | Artists: Edward Burtynsky

April 5, 2023 [originally published in CV112 in Summer 2019] — By Bénédicte Ramade. From the start it seems taken for granted: Edward Burtynsky’s Anthropocene at the National Gallery of Canada will be technophilic.¹ At every opportunity…

Paris Photo, A Game of Memory — Claudia Polledri

Ciel variable 112 - COLLECTIONS REVISITED | Essays
Authors: Claudia Polledri | Artists: Daido Moriyama

March 28, 2023 [originally published in CV112 in Summer 2019] — By Claudia Polledri. Context. The 22nd edition of the Paris Photo international photography fair took place November 8–11, 2018, in Paris. During the four-day fair, crowds of artists, gallery owners, collectors, publishers, curators, journalists, and photography lovers bustled through the Grand Palais, which had become a labyrinth of images organized by Paris Photo director Florence Bourgeois and artistic director Christoph Wiesner…

Milo Rau, Truth and Justice: The Congo Tribunal — Pierre Dessureault

Ciel variable 112 - COLLECTIONS REVISITED | Essays
Authors: Pierre Dessureault | Artists: Milo Rau

22 mars, 2023 [originally published in CV112 in Summer 2019] — By Pierre Dessureault. The International Institute of Political Murder was created in 2007 by Swiss director, artist, and ﬁlmmaker Milo Rau. Since then, Rau has produced more than ﬁfty plays, ﬁlms, performances, and video installations on social and political realities, most of them complex and controversial…

Collection Lazare : États d’âmes, esprit des lieux — Colette Tougas, Portraits of Families with Nature (Still Life or Other)

Ciel variable 112 - COLLECTIONS REVISITED | Portfolios
Authors: Colette Tougas | Artists: Nicolas Baier

March 15, 2023 [originally published in CV112 in Summer 2019] — By Colette Tougas. One purpose of the exhibition devoted to the Lazare collection at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts was to highlight thirtythree photographs that have been donated to the institution by Montreal collector Jack Lazare…

Bertrand Carrière, Tout ceci est impossible — Sylvain Campeau, Time is Impossible

Ciel variable 112 - COLLECTIONS REVISITED | Portfolios
Authors: Sylvain Campeau | Artists: Bertrand Carrière

March 8, 2022 [originally published in CV112 in Summer 2019] — By Sylvain Campeau. Bertrand Carrière has had a long relationship with the ﬁlm world. Before establishing himself as an artist, he took many pictures as a soundstage photographer. But such images must not be seen solely as the result of a professional practice that imposed frameworks and constraints on the creation of images…

Serge Clément, Archipel — Alexis Desgagnés, Geography of an Archipelago

Ciel variable 112 - COLLECTIONS REVISITED | Portfolios
Authors: Alexis Desgagnés | Artists: Serge Clément

March 1, 2023 [originally published in CV112 in Summer 2019] — By Alexis Desgagnés. In 2014 in Quebec City, photographer Serge Clément and I presented the exhibition Constellations, composed of a corpus of photobooks drawn from Clément’s impressive collection…

Les Rencontres d’Arles. Warm and Sunny with Possibility of Showers! — Bruno Chalifour

Ciel variable 111 - THE SPACE OF COLOUR | Interviews
Authors: Bruno Chalifour

February 22, 2023 [originally published in CV111 in Winter 2019] — By Bruno Chalifour

A year from its fiftieth anniversary, Les Rencontres Internationales de la Photographie (the festival’s original name), now simply Rencontres de la Photographie, hosted its usual huge program, composed of more than fifty exhibitions in thirty-six sites, from July 2 to September 23…

New & Worthy

Ciel variable 111 - THE SPACE OF COLOUR | Book Reviews

February 15, 2023 [originally published in CV111 in Winter 2019] — This eighty page artists´ bookwork, Berlin Wall. Truro, Nova Scotia, was produced in collaboration with designer Bryan Gee and first presented as part of the installation “The Labour of Commemoration,” at Prefix ICA, in 2017. The authors examine the post-1989 history of a set of six Berlin Wall slabs that found their way to a vacant lot in the centre of Truro, Nova Scotia, in 2000. The book addresses the issue of the absence of post-1989 histories of the Wall, through interviews and newspaper articles…

Clémence Cottard Hachem et Nour Salamé (dir.), Sur la photographie au Liban — Claudia Polledri

Ciel variable 111 - THE SPACE OF COLOUR | Book Reviews
Authors: Claudia Polledri

[Winter 2019] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.

Martha Langford (dir.), Narratives Unfolding: National Art Histories in an Unfinished World — Erika Wicky

Ciel variable 111 - THE SPACE OF COLOUR | Book Reviews
Authors: Erika Wicky

[Winter 2019] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.

Pierre Blache, Les lieux suspendus — Franck Michel

Ciel variable 111 - THE SPACE OF COLOUR | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Franck Michel | Artists: Pierre Blache

[Winter 2019] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.

Jocelyn Robert, Coïncidences — Cynthia Fecteau

Ciel variable 111 - THE SPACE OF COLOUR | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Cynthia Fecteau | Artists: Jocelyn Robert

[Winter 2019] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.

Taysir Batniji, Home Away From Home — Michèle Hadria

Ciel variable 111 - THE SPACE OF COLOUR | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Michèle Cohen Hadria | Artists: Taysir Batniji

[Winter 2019] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.

Raqs Media Collective, Everything Else Is Ordinary — Ariane Noël De Tilly

Ciel variable 111 - THE SPACE OF COLOUR | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Ariane Noël de Tilly | Artists: Raqs Media Collective

[Winter 2019] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.

PHOS 2018 — Claire Moeder

Ciel variable 111 - THE SPACE OF COLOUR | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Claire Moeder | Artists: Maryse Goudreau

[Winter 2019] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.

Regards critiques et nouvelle photographie — James D. Campbell

Ciel variable 111 - THE SPACE OF COLOUR | Exhibition reviews
Authors: James D. Campbell | Artists: Isabelle Hayeur

November 9, 2022 [originally published in CV111 in Winter 2019] — This compelling exhibition of the works of Isabelle Hayeur, Thomas Kneubühler, Jean-François Lemire, Valerian Mazataud, and Andreas Rutkauskas was notable for the trenchant criticality of its thematic engagement with sundry social and environmental issues…

L’imaginaire radical : le contrat social — Daniel Fiset

Ciel variable 111 - THE SPACE OF COLOUR | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Daniel Fiset | Artists: Milo Rau

[Winter 2019] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.

Camerart. Art from the Point of View of Photography — Pierre Dessureault

Ciel variable 111 - THE SPACE OF COLOUR | Essays
Authors: Pierre Dessureault | Artists: Charles Gagnon

September 7, 2022 [originally published in CV111 in Winter 2019] — The exhibition Camerart, produced by Galerie Optica and presented in Montreal from December 16, 1974, to January 14, 1975, was a pivotal event in the photography/art debate in Quebec…

Rencontres internationales de la photographie en Gaspésie. Traces of the Chaos — Érika Nimis

Ciel variable 111 - THE SPACE OF COLOUR | Essays
Authors: Erika Nimis | Artists: Debi Cornwall

August 31, 2022 [originally published in CV111 in Winter 2019] — By Érika Nimis. Every summer since 2010, Les Rencontres internationales de la photographie en Gaspésie has literally pushed art photography into parks and forests and onto beaches, inviting visitors to a true treasure hunt along the legendary Route 132…

Marisa Portolese, Kinship as a Practice: In the Studio with Notman — Laurie Milner

Ciel variable 111 - THE SPACE OF COLOUR | Essays
Authors: Laurie Milner | Artists: Marisa Portolese

August 3, 2022 [originally published in CV111 in Winter 2019] — By Laurie Milner. Kinship, broadly defined, is a core concept in Montreal artist Marisa Portolese’s photographic practice…

Bert Danckaert, True Nature — James D. Campbell, Strange Oases of the Seen: Images of the Built World

Ciel variable 111 - THE SPACE OF COLOUR | Portfolios
Authors: James D. Campbell | Artists: Bert Danckaert

June 21, 2022 [originally published in CV111 in Winter 2019] — By James D. Campbell. The photographs of Belgian artist Bert Danckaert have been likened to abstract paintings, but the family resemblance resides more in the facture than in the finished work of art…

Jessica Eaton, Iterations (I) — Stephen Horne, System or Poem?

Ciel variable 111 - THE SPACE OF COLOUR | Portfolios
Authors: Stephen Horne | Artists: Jessica Eaton

June 21, 2022 [originally published in CV111 in Winter 2019] — By Stephen Horne. A number of Montreal artists are proposing ambitious responses to the dissolution of traditional artistic genres in what is clearly a “post-medium world.” Jessica Eaton is one of these, as evidenced by her recent exhibition titled Iterations (I) at Galerie Ertaskiran..

Yann Pocreau, Les surfaces de lumière — Bénédicte Ramade, The Life of Colours

Ciel variable 111 - THE SPACE OF COLOUR | Portfolios
Authors: Bénédicte Ramade | Artists: Yann Pocreau

June 14, 2022 [originally published in CV111 in Winter 2019] — By Bénédicte Ramade. In one of his most recent series, Réponses à la peinture, Yann Pocreau establishes an interplay of brightly coloured superimpositions, transparencies, and opacities…

Louise Déry. Hosting and Presenting the Exhibition Uprisings – Jacques Doyon

Ciel variable 110 - MIGRATION | Interviews
Authors: Jacques Doyon, Louise Déry

May 10, 2022 [originally published in CV110 in Fall 2018 ] — An interview by Jacques Doyon. Louise Déry holds a PhD in art history and has been director of the Galerie de l’UQAM (Université du Québec à Montréal) since 1997; previously, she was director of the Musée régional de Rimouski and curator of contemporary art at the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec and the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts…