[SUMMER2026]
C’est trop beau, je vais le prendre en photo
by Nathalie Côté
VU, centre de diffusion et de production de la photographie, Québec
12.09.2025 — 19.10.2025
[EXCERPT]
The photographic work that Jasmin Bilodeau presented at VU was his most accomplished and convincing solo show since 2019, when the artist trio BGL, with which he had worked for more than twenty years, disbanded. In the Méduse cooperative’s artist-run centre, he exhibited four large photographs, each evoking a season. They were images of abandoned businesses: a movie theatre, a corner store, a hardware store, a storefront for rent, located in Montreal, Quebec City, and Saint-Ludger, near Lac-Mégantic, where he was born. Are these photographs still photographs? I wondered as I stood before frescoes that were both plausible and ambiguous. Some clues to an answer could be found by rereading Susan Sontag’s essay On Photography (1979), but even more came to light when I met with Bilodeau in his Quebec City studio.
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[ Complete issue, in print and digital version, available here: Ciel variable 132 – TABLEAUX ]
[ Complete article in digital version available here: TITRE ARTICLE]
Nathalie Côté is a regular contributor to art magazines. She is the coordinator of Droit de parole, a newspaper for workingclass struggles in Quebec City. She holds a master’s degree in art history from the Université de Montréal. From 1998 to 2008, she was a critic at Voir magazine in Quebec City and the newspaper Le Soleil.