Michèle Pearson Clarke, The Animal Seems to Be Moving – Dayna McLeod, Queer Black Masculinities: Middle-aged Boyhood

Ciel variable 123 – THE POWER OF INTIMACY | Portfolios
Authors: Dayna McLeod | Artists: Michèle Pearson Clarke

[Summer 2023] Queer Black Masculinities: Middle-aged Boyhood By Dayna McLeod [Excerpt] An exercise in confronting shyness, shame, and fear about singing, Quantum Choir1 is a moving enactment of queer kinship and vulnerability in which Michèle Pearson Clarke invites three other queer masculine people with no singing experience to learn to sing with her and ultimately […]

Raymonde April, Traversée — Pierre Dessureault, Snapshots of Memory

Ciel variable 123 – THE POWER OF INTIMACY | Portfolios
Authors: Pierre Dessureault | Artists: Raymonde April

[Summer 2023] Snapshots of Memory By Pierre Dessureault [Excerpt] “During the spring and summer, I make a lot of photographs. My contact sheets are filled with outdoor scenes, with landscapes and, most of all, with people in landscapes. . . . Then, before fall sets in, I go back home. I pore over my contact […]

Evergon, Theatres of the Intimate — Nathalie Côté, The Liberated Gaze

Ciel variable 123 – THE POWER OF INTIMACY | Portfolios
Authors: Nathalie Côté | Artists: Evergon

[Summer 2023] The Liberated Gaze By Nathalie Côté [Excerpt] The retrospective dedicated to the artist Evergon by the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec1 provided an overview of his contribution to photography over fifty years of creation and more than two hundred images. His virtuosity is fascinating, and the issues that he has addressed over […]

The Power of Intimacy

Ciel variable 123 – THE POWER OF INTIMACY | Portfolios
Artists: Evergon, Michèle Pearson Clarke, Raymonde April

[Summer 2023] The intimate is where we first experiment and affirm our own identity – an existential issue that plays out essentially between self and self. At the same time, such identification can occur only in interrelation with people with whom one has strong affinities. Identity is also a relationship with the other: what we […]

Elective Affinities

Ciel variable 123 – THE POWER OF INTIMACY | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon | Artists: Evergon, Michèle Pearson Clarke, Raymonde April

[Summer 2023] By Jacques Doyon Theatres of the Intimate, the major exhibition of Evergon’s work at the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, mea- sures the scope of an approach that celebrates the gay body and homosexual desire. Throughout his body of work, Evergon deploys a highly personal theatre of intimate relationships, desires, and impulses […]

Ciel variable 123 – The Power of Intimacy

Ciel variable 123 – THE POWER OF INTIMACY

[Summer 2023] The intimate is where we first experiment and affirm our own identity – an existential issue that plays out essentially between self and self. At the same time, such identification can occur only in interrelation with people with whom one has strong affinities. Identity is also a relationship with the other: what we […]

Jacynthe Carrier and Anne-Marie Proulx, Photography, care and community — Jacques Doyon

Ciel variable 122 – NIGHT ROUNDS | Interviews
Authors: Jacques Doyon | Artists: Anne-Marie Proulx, Jacynthe Carrier

[Winter 2023] Jacynthe Carrier and Anne-Marie Proulx, Photography, care and community An interview by Jacques Doyon [Excerpt] Jacynthe Carrier and Anne­-Marie Proulx, co­ directors of VU, centre de diffusion et de produc­tion de la photographie since 2015, share a com­munity spirit that is manifested in how they have worked together in the roles of executive […]

The Mystery of. In conversation with the Sanchez Brothers — Gary Michael Dault

Ciel variable 122 – NIGHT ROUNDS | Book Reviews
Authors: Gary Michael Dault | Artists: Carlos & Jason Sanchez

[Winter 2023] By Gary Michael Dault Adam Leith Gollner Montréal, Anteism, 2022, 158 p. [Excerpt] This book’s apparently truncated title, The Mystery of – whether chosen by its subjects, photographers and filmmakers (and brothers) Jason Sanchez and Carlos Sanchez, or by the book’s author, Adam Leith Gollner – is as provocatively incomplete (or at least […]

Justine Kurland, Girl Pictures / Highway Kind — Étienne Ardaens

Ciel variable 122 – NIGHT ROUNDS | Book Reviews
Authors: Étienne Ardaens | Artists: Justine Kurland

[Winter 2023] Étienne Ardaens Justine Kurland New York, Aperture, 2020, 144 p. / New York, Aperture, 2021, 144 p. [Excerpt] Two photobooks recently published by Aperture provide an opportunity to rediscover the work of Justine Kurland. The series Girl Pictures, featured in a show at the Mitchell-Innes & Nash Gallery in 2018, appeared in book […]

Tendance Floue, Fragiles — Sophie Bertrand

Ciel variable 122 – NIGHT ROUNDS | Book Reviews
Authors: Sophie Bertrand | Artists: Tendance Floue

[Winter 2023] Sophie Bertrand Tendance Floue Paris, éditions Textuel, 2022, 190 p. [Excerpt] Fragiles is the most recent project of Tendance Floue, a French collective founded in 1991 that today comprises sixteen photographers – thirteen men and three women – with varied visual signatures. Although each member practises independently, the collective regularly produces joint projects […]

Omer Fast, Zach Blas, Susan Schuppli — Nicolas Mavrikakis

Ciel variable 122 – NIGHT ROUNDS | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Nicolas Mavrikakis | Artists: Omer Fast

[Winter 2023] By Nicolas Mavrikakis Campus für Demokratie, Berlin Biennale für zeitgenössische Kunst 11.06.2022 — 18.09.2022 [Excerpt] The idea is aptly striking. The section of the 12th Berlin Biennale addressing issues about surveillance – its title is Still Present! – and dealing with its weighty heritages from modernity was set in the gigantic former headquarters […]

Ken Lum, Death and Furniture — Earl Miller

Ciel variable 122 – NIGHT ROUNDS | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Earl Miller | Artists: Ken Lum

[Winter 2023] By Earl Miller Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto 25.06.2022 — 02.01.2023 [Excerpt] The forty-year survey of Ken Lum’s work, Death and Furniture, marking his receipt of the 2019 Gershon Iskowitz Prize, is timely. Like other members of the Vancouver School, Lum has had a grounding in first-generation post-modernism and Marxism. However, he is […]

Manon Labrecque, des [ré] animations — Sylvain Campeau

Ciel variable 122 – NIGHT ROUNDS | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Sylvain Campeau | Artists: Manon Labrecque

[Winter 2023] Sylvain Campeau Maison des arts de Laval 01.05.2022 — 03.07.2022 [Excerpt] For some ten years, as foretold in her previous works, Manon Labrecque has been producing unique visual and animation devices, including ones in which the images apparently move, forming an utterly original cinégénie (a wonderful term coined by Dominique Païni). She did […]

Alexander Henderson, Art and Nature — Sophie Bertrand

Ciel variable 122 – NIGHT ROUNDS | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Sophie Bertrand | Artists: Alexander Henderson

[Winter 2023] Sophie Bertrand McCord Museum 10.06.2022 – 16.04.2023 [Excerpt] In 2021, the McCord Museum celebrated its one-hundredth anniversary against the backdrop of COVID-19. As a result of the forced closure of museums due to the pandemic, the retrospective exhibition of photographs by Alexander Henderson – who had fallen into obscurity for more than a […]

Michelle Bui, Mutable Materialism — Didier Morelli

Ciel variable 122 – NIGHT ROUNDS | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Didier Morelli | Artists: Michelle Bui

[Winter 2023] By Didier Morelli Contemporary Art Gallery and Yaletown-Roundhouse Station, Vancouver 1.04.2022 — 28.08.2022 [Excerpt] On a rainy Vancouver day, when most of the city’s vibrant colour is sapped and replaced by greyscale, the downtown core is especially downcast. Postmodern steel-and-glass skyscrapers appear starved for light, desperately reaching out toward cloud-filled skies. As I […]

Judith Joy Ross, Photographies 1978–2015 — Michèle Cohen Hadria

Ciel variable 122 – NIGHT ROUNDS | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Michèle Cohen Hadria | Artists: Judith Joy Ross

[Winter 2023] By Michèle Cohen Hadria LE BAL, Paris 16.03.2022 — 18.09.2022 [Excerpt] Portraiture is not my favourite photographic genre. However, when I visited the first exhibition of Judith Joy Ross’s work in France, I felt that it opened a world to me – one built of respect for and a subtle approach to human […]

Hiwa K, Do you remember what you are burning? — Jill Glessing

Ciel variable 122 – NIGHT ROUNDS | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Jill Glessing | Artists: Hiwa K

[Winter 2023] By Jill Glessing The Power Plant, Toronto 20.05.2022 — 28.08.2022 [Excerpt] Hiwa K manages an uneasy balance among being an artist, an activist, a teacher, a philosopher, a musician, and, since his recent return to Iraq, a farmer. Resistant to the professional and academic boxes that most artists and intellectuals inhabit (he calls […]

Sophie Guignard — Indigenous Forced Displacement

Ciel variable 122 – NIGHT ROUNDS | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Sophie Guignard

[Winter 2023] By Sophie Guignard Galerie FOFA, Montréal 26.06.2022 — 20.08.2022 [Excerpt] During summer 2022, Concordia University’s Faculty of Fine Arts Gallery turned outward to the street. Ten large and arresting black-and-white portraits were displayed in the gallery’s windows. What stood out at first glance was the diversity of people portrayed. It was obvious, given […]

Daniel Hausmann, Backstage among the Urban Ruins — Mona Hakim

Ciel variable 122 – NIGHT ROUNDS | Essays
Authors: Mona Hakim

[Winter 2023] Daniel Hausmann, Backstage among the Urban Ruins By Mona Hakim [Excerpt] I first encountered the work of the photographer Daniel Hausmann several years ago, during a visit to his studio, which had been opened to a group of guests. His urban images were unique – at once baroque, dark, and striking. Abandoned lots […]

Michael Snow, The Artist’s Maman Book — Jean Gagnon

Ciel variable 122 – NIGHT ROUNDS | Essays
Authors: Jean Gagnon | Artists: Michael Snow

[Winter 2023] Michael Snow, The Artist’s Maman Book By Jean Gagnon [Excerpt] At age ninety-four, Michael Snow has published My Mother’s Collection of Photographs,1 which he called his “maman book” during its production. As the title does not indicate, the photographs in question were not taken by an artist but are typical family pictures, a […]

John Max, Line Leading through Photography — Michel Hardy-Vallée

Ciel variable 122 – NIGHT ROUNDS | Essays
Authors: Michel Hardy-Vallée | Artists: John Max

[Winter 2023] John Max, Line Leading through Photography By Michel Hardy-Vallée [Excerpt] To sum up an artist’s career apparently takes just a few major works, some biographical references, and several general remarks on how the artist’s work was received, all in chronological order. No need to write a novel. But to achieve such a level […]

Emmanuelle Léonard, Black Out : Les livreurs / The Deliverers — Gabrielle Sarthou, Those Who Wait for Us

Ciel variable 122 – NIGHT ROUNDS | Portfolios
Authors: Gabrielle Sarthou | Artists: Emmanuelle Léonard

[Winter 2023] Those Who Wait for Us By Gabrielle Sarthou [Excerpt] Going from place to place in the city. The sidewalk unfurls under our feet. The stores scroll by, one after another. Sometimes, we no longer notice the neon signs or the people we pass. The faces fade. We classify, we consider, then we forget. […]

Santiago Tamayo Soler, Neón — Edward Pérez-González, Tracing to Build: Concealing to Reveal

Ciel variable 122 – NIGHT ROUNDS | Portfolios
Authors: Edward Pérez-González | Artists: Santiago Tamayo Soler

[Winter 2023] By Edward Pérez-González. Tracing means running a pencil over a line that is already drawn. Inking it again to make it thicker; correcting it, putting it back on its feet, in a way…

Éliane Excoffier, Nightlife au mont Pinacle — Yannick Marcoux, Living Creatures Found in the Night

Ciel variable 122 – NIGHT ROUNDS | Portfolios
Authors: Yannick Marcoux | Artists: Éliane Excoffier

[Winter 2023] By Yannick Marcoux. The forest doesn’t belong to us. We have chopped down its trees, hunted its animals, and polluted its rivers, but one aspect of its intrinsic forces still evades us. Like oceans, forests, though absolutely concrete, inhabited, and alive, sometimes seem intangible…

Night Rounds

Ciel variable 122 – NIGHT ROUNDS | Portfolios
Artists: Éliane Excoffier, Emmanuelle Léonard

[Winter 2023] No matter what the adage says, all cats are not grey in the dark. Night-time brings out a throng of personalities and countless activities. In nature, that’s when the wild animals finally take over. ..

Another World

Ciel variable 122 – NIGHT ROUNDS | Editorial
Authors: Jérôme Delgado | Artists: Éliane Excoffier, Emmanuelle Léonard

[Winter 2023] By Jérôme Delgado. No matter what the adage says, all cats are not grey in the dark. Night-time brings out a throng of personalities, countless activities, and – without a shadow of a doubt – a rich colour palette.

Ciel variable 122 – Night Rounds

Ciel variable 122 – NIGHT ROUNDS

[Winter 2023] No matter what the adage says, all cats are not grey in the dark. Night-time brings out a throng of personalities, countless activities, and – without a shadow of a doubt – a rich colour palette. More often than not, it suits us to close our eyes to what’s happening once the light […]

Zoë Tousignant, The Continuing History — Michel Hardy-Vallée

Ciel variable 121 – WANDERINGS | Interviews
Authors: Michel Hardy-Vallée, Zoë Tousignant

[Fall 2022] Zoë Tousignant, The Continuing History An interview by Michel Hardy-Vallée [Excerpt] Zoë Tousignant is the curator of photography at the McCord Museum. She holds a PhD in art history from Concordia University and an MA in museum studies from the University of Leeds. Her research focuses on twentieth-century and contemporary photography produced in […]

Sylvain Campeau, Écrans motiles — Daniel Canty

Ciel variable 121 – WANDERINGS | Book Reviews
Authors: Sylvain Campeau | Artists: Daniel Canty

[Fall 2022] By Daniel Canty Écrans motiles Montréal, Les Presses de l’Université de Montréal, 2021, 280 p. [Excerpt] “Motility.” That’s the idea that Sylvain Campeau has chosen to summon for the title of his most recent book, Écrans motiles. If, like me, you’re wondering about the term, it is borrowed from the life sciences, in […]

Dialogue photographique sur la Route de la soie — Claudia Polledri

Ciel variable 121 – WANDERINGS | Book Reviews
Authors: Claudia Polledri

[Fall 2022] By Claudia Polledri Dialogue photographique sur la Route de la soie Nadar/Payram Paris, Éditions Le bec en l’air, 2021, 112 p [Excerpt] One book, two trajectories, a single “road” and photography: Dialogue photographique sur la Route de la soie is a surprising voyage through space, time, and the history of photography. Iranian photographer […]

Photogenic Montreal: Activisms and Archives in a Post-Industrial City — Cheryl Simon

Ciel variable 121 – WANDERINGS | Book Reviews
Authors: Cheryl Simon

[Fall 2022] By Cheryl Simon Martha Langford and Johanne Sloan (editors) Montreal, McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2021, 368 p. [Excerpt] The spectacular photograph on the cover of Photogenic Montreal: Activisms and Archives in a Post-Industrial City perfectly condenses the themes addressed throughout the book. Made by photojournalist Louise Abbott in the early morning of September 8, […]

Graciela Iturbide, Heliotropo 37 — Stephen Horne

Ciel variable 121 – WANDERINGS | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Stephen Horne

[Fall 2022] By Stephen Horne Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain, Paris 12.02.2022 — 29.05.2022 [Excerpt] The exhibition takes its title, Heliotropo 37, from the street address of the artist’s studio in Mexico City. The artist is Graciela Iturbide, and the studio transposed to the Fondation Cartier in Paris was created by Mauricio Rocha, who also […]

Sébastien Michaud, Les jardiniers de la forêt — Mathieu Teasdale

Ciel variable 121 – WANDERINGS | Exhibition reviews
Artists: Sébastien Michaud

[Fall 2022] By Mathieu Teasdale Maison de la culture de Pointe-aux-Trembles, Montréal 19.03.2022 — 15.05.2022 [Excerpt] Presented at the Maison de la culture de Pointe-aux-Trembles, Sébastien Michaud’s exhibition Les jardiniers de la forêt walks the line between photographic documentary and realist narrative installation. Both of these positions, carefully articulated, help to contextualize the workers in […]

Clara Gutsche, Portraits d’enfants. Children — Jérôme Delgado

Ciel variable 121 – WANDERINGS | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Jérôme Delgado | Artists: Clara Gutsche

[Fall 2022] By Jérôme Delgado Optica, un centre d’art contemporain, Montréal 9.04.2022 — 11.06.2022 [Excerpt] Gazing at children, as Clara Gutsche has done – and still does – is to lean into thresholds that open to imminent changes. It’s to examine what makes the familiar different or, on the contrary, what familiarity may arise from […]

Steve Giasson, Steve Giasson as Others / Steve Giasson comme les autres — Emmanuelle Choquette

Ciel variable 121 – WANDERINGS | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Emmanuelle Choquette | Artists: Steve Giasson

[Fall 2022] By Emmanuelle Choquette Carleton University Art Gallery, Ottawa 15.02.2022 — 3.04.2022 [Excerpt] When we enter Steve Giasson as Others/ Steve Giasson comme les autres, it’s as if we’re entering a portrait gallery in a museum: the works are hung in a single line at eye level – a succession of photographs of similar […]

Nicolas Baier, Procession — Edward Pérez-González

Ciel variable 121 – WANDERINGS | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Edward Pérez-González | Artists: Nicolas Baier

[Fall 2022] By Edward Pérez-González Manif d’art 10, Québec 19.02.2022 — 24.04.2022 [Excerpt] A zoom in on a dense and intensely green forest. A slow, continuous move- ment suggests an infinitely dilated time and produces a growing tension as details are highlighted. A slight wind brings the forest out of its lethargy, making leaves and […]

Lawrence Abu Hamdan, 45th Parallel — Jill Glessing

Ciel variable 121 – WANDERINGS | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Jill Glessing | Artists: Lawrence Abu Hamdan

[Fall 2022] By Jill Glessing Mercer Union, Toronto 26.03.2022 — 4.06.2022 [Excerpt] Territorial borders function as economic technologies, designed to protect regional resources and wealth. As borders become increasingly porous for transferring capital and goods thanks to globalized free trade agreements, they correspondingly tighten against human migration. The dissolution of the Berlin Wall in 1989 […]

JJ Levine, Queer Photographs — Didier Morelli

Ciel variable 121 – WANDERINGS | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Didier Morelli | Artists: JJ Levine

[Fall 2022] By Didier Morelli McCord Museum, Montreal 18.02.2022 — 18.09.2022 [Excerpt] Entering JJ Levine’s most recent solo exhibition at the McCord Museum, viewers are greeted with a wall-sized vinyl photograph titled Boyfriends in Bed (2011). In this image from the ongoing series Queer Portraits, two romantic partners lie on a purple bedcover with red […]

A Trillion Sunsets. A Century of Image Overload — Sylvain Campeau

Ciel variable 121 – WANDERINGS | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Sylvain Campeau

[Fall 2022] By Sylvain Campeau International Center of Photography, New York 28.01.2022 — 2.05.2022 [Excerpt] With its very title, A Trillion Sunsets: A Century of Image Overload announces its subject and its attitude. Looking at the publicity for the show, we would note that this is a theme very much of our times – maybe […]

Cloud Album — At the Intersection of Science and Art — Karen Henry

Ciel variable 121 – WANDERINGS | Essays
Authors: Karen Henry

[Fall 2022] By Karen Henry [Excerpt] We humans project a great deal onto clouds, as they oat loftily above or gather and settle in around us. They represent the grandeur and mutability of nature but are also intimate to our everyday experience and the subject of idle contemplation – to have one’s “head in the […]

Disraeli – une expérience humaine en photographie — Pierre Dessureault, A Look Back at the Disraeli Adventure

Ciel variable 121 – WANDERINGS | Essays
Authors: Pierre Dessureault

[Fall 2022] A Look Back at the Disraeli Adventure By Pierre Dessureault [Extract] 1972–2022. A half-century has passed since an adventure called Disraeli – une expérience humaine en photographie (Disraeli – A Human Experiment in Photography) took place.1 By no means is it my intention here to commemorate or eulogize this pivotal moment in the […]

Shirin Neshat, Dreams as Acts of Resistance — Jill Glessing

Ciel variable 121 – WANDERINGS | Essays
Authors: Jill Glessing | Artists: Shirin Neshat

[Fall 2022] Dreams as Acts of Resistance By Jill Glessing [Extract] Displacement, loss, longing – these existential experiences settle in us as we settle around the globe. Contemporary surges of human migration – forced either by conditions of war or poverty or in voluntary search of new opportunities – make these states of dislocation increasingly […]

Pierre Blache, L’insolence des villes — Stay Home; Take a Walk, Michel Hardy-Vallée

Ciel variable 121 – WANDERINGS | Portfolios
Authors: Michel Hardy-Vallée | Artists: Pierre Blache

[Fall 2022] Stay Home; Take a Walk By Michel Hardy-Vallée [Excerpt] My memory of the early months of the pandemic remains blurry, but these two contradictory, yet simultaneous, injunctions issued at the beginning of lockdown have suddenly popped up in my mind. These imperatives, apparently banal – even apparently insignificant – were to change our […]

Chun Hua Catherine Dong, I Have Been There – New York — Didier Morelli, To Be There, or To Have Been There

Ciel variable 121 – WANDERINGS | Portfolios
Authors: Didier Morelli

[Fall 2022] To Be There, or To Have Been There By Didier Morelli [Extract] Here I want to add that the architecture does not solely permit such levels of comfort and discomfort, but also the body comportment – the body movements of men and women, whites, blacks, or otherwise racialized people – in these spaces […]

Justine Kurland, Highway Kind (A Love Story) — Moyra Davey, Young Men at Risk

Ciel variable 121 – WANDERINGS | Portfolios
Authors: Moyra Davey | Artists: Justine Kurland

[Fall 2022] Young Men at Risk By Moyra Davey Anything you feel you better be able to feel out loud. – Kathleen Collins, in a workshop for students at Howard University, 1984 Kathleen Collins went on to say in that workshop, “Good work is dependent on detachment.” It is not obvious how to reconcile the […]

Wanderings

Ciel variable 121 – WANDERINGS | Portfolios
Artists: Chun Hua Catherine Dong, Justine Kurland, Pierre Blache

[Fall 2022] Walking in the city, travelling down country roads, discovering the country, exploring foreign capitals – in short, getting moving – we confront different perspectives, contextualize or a rm our values, and take the measure of the world we live in. Such mobility, such constant travels, are the basis for the works brought together […]

Looking for Places that Speak to Us

Ciel variable 121 – WANDERINGS | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon | Artists: Chun Hua Catherine Dong, Justine Kurland, Pierre Blache

[Fall 2022] By Jacques Doyon Walking in the city, travelling down country roads, discovering the country, exploring foreign capitals – in short, getting moving – we confront different perspectives, contextualize or a rm our values, and take the measure of the world we live in. Such mobility, such constant travels, are the basis for the […]

Ciel variable 121 – Wanderings

Ciel variable 121 – WANDERINGS

[Fall 2022]

Walking in the city, travelling down country roads, discovering the country, exploring foreign capitals – in short, getting moving – we confront different perspectives, contextualize or a rm our values, and take the measure of the world we live in. Such mobility, such constant travels, are the basis for the works brought together here, which are rooted in the desire to show the underside of America, to invert the icons of planetary tourism, or to take stock of the hypertrophy of major urban centres.

Paul Roth, Finding Purpose: Burtynsky’s Archive at RIC — Jérôme Delgado

Ciel variable 120 - FIGURES OF AFFIRMATION | Interviews
Authors: Jérôme Delgado | Artists: Edward Burtynsky

[Summer 2022] Finding Purpose: Burtynsky’s Archive at RIC An interview by Jérôme Delgado [Excerpt] The internationally renowned artist and environmental photographer Edward Burtynsky was born in St. Catharines, on the shore of Lake Ontario – just a few pulls of the oars from Toronto, where he went to Ryerson Polytechnical Institute (today Ryerson University), graduating […]

Jocelyn Philibert, Metamorphosis of the real — Mona Hakim

Ciel variable 120 - FIGURES OF AFFIRMATION | Book Reviews
Authors: Mona Hakim | Artists: Jocelyn Philibert

[Summer 2022] By Mona Hakim. This major monograph on the photographer Jocelyn Philibert covers his production over more than thirty years. We know Philibert for his nocturnal landscapes focusing essentially – one might say obsessively – on the figure of the tree…

Jean Gagnon, Vidéocaméléon — Sylvain Campeau

Ciel variable 120 - FIGURES OF AFFIRMATION | Book Reviews
Authors: Sylvain Campeau | Artists: Jean Gagnon

[Summer 2022] By Sylvain Campeau Vidéocaméléon. Chroniques de l’art vidéo au Québec Montréal, Éditions Somme toute, 2021, 239 p. [Excerpt] Let’s start by saying it straight out, without splitting hairs: this book will be highly useful to everyone interested in the visual arts in Canada, and particularly in the emergence of video art in Quebec. […]

Matt Johnston, Photobooks & — Louis Perreault

Ciel variable 120 - FIGURES OF AFFIRMATION | Book Reviews
Authors: Louis Perreault | Artists: Matt Johnston

[Summer 2022] By Louis Perreault Photobooks & A critical companion to the contemporary medium Onomatopee, Eindhoven, Pays-Bas, 2021, 210 p. [Excerpt] Much has been written about the effervescence of the photobook as a medium since the early 2000s. The importance of books that retrace the history of the medium – celebrating the genre’s classics and […]

Sarah Moon, At the Still Point — Ariane Noël de Tilly

Ciel variable 120 - FIGURES OF AFFIRMATION | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Ariane Noël de Tilly | Artists: Sarah Moon

[Summer 2022] By Ariane Noël de Tilly Fotografiska, New York 15.10.2021— 6.02.2022 [Excerpt] It was La robe à pois (1996), a large-format photograph placed at the entrance to the exhibition, that invited visitors to immerse themselves in the enigmatic universe, sometimes in colour but usually in black and white, of French photographer Sarah Moon. In […]

Myriam Yates, Parcs. Playgrounds — Josianne Poirier

Ciel variable 120 - FIGURES OF AFFIRMATION | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Josianne Poirier | Artists: Myriam Yates

[Summer 2022] By Josianne Poirier Optica, Montréal 6.11.2021 — 18.12.2021 [Excerpt] For the series of photographs and videos comprising the exhibition Parcs. Playgrounds, Myriam Yates aimed her camera at deserted playgrounds. The facilities that she documented in different New York neighbourhoods in 2018 nevertheless bear the traces of past use and suggest bodies in gymnastic […]

Sorel Cohen, Métaphores conceptuelles — Johanne Sloan

Ciel variable 120 - FIGURES OF AFFIRMATION | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Johanne Sloan | Artists: Sorel Cohen

[Summer 2022] By Johanne Sloan VOX – Centre de l’image contemporaine, Montréal 18.11.2021 — 19.02.2022 [Excerpt] The wit, energy, and experimental spirit of Sorel Cohen’s work is as inspiring as ever in an exhibition at VOX, which brings together selected pieces from the 1970s to the 2000s. Cohen’s art practice flourished at the intersection of […]

Emmanuel Galland, « Mes Dates / Close Friends » — Sophie Bertrand

Ciel variable 120 - FIGURES OF AFFIRMATION | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Sophie Bertrand | Artists: Emmanuel Galland

[Summer 2022] By Sophie Bertrand HANGAR 7826, Montréal 6.11.2021 — 28.11.2021 [Excerpt] Max, Brad, Tyler, John, Diego, Erik. These disembodied names, crowded together on the walls of the small gallery HANGAR 7826, wordlessly welcome us to the most recent exhibition by Emmanuel Galland, « Mes Dates / Close Friends ». At first glance, the grouping […]

Taysir Batniji, Quelques bribes arrachées au vide qui se creuse — Érika Nimis

Ciel variable 120 - FIGURES OF AFFIRMATION | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Erika Nimis | Artists: Taysir Batniji

[Summer 2022] By Érika Nimis MAC VAL Musée d’art contemporain du Val-de-Marne, Vitry-sur-Seine 6.06.2021 — 9.01.2022 [Excerpt] The Musée d’art contemporain du Val-de-Marne devoted a solo exhibition to Taysir Batniji, retracing with rare coherence more than twenty-five years of his art career in some fifty works: paintings, drawings, photographs, videos, installations, performances. Born in Gaza […]

Taysir Batniji, Quelques bribes arrachées au vide qui se creuse — Érika Nimis

Ciel variable 120 - FIGURES OF AFFIRMATION | Exhibition reviews

[Été 2022] Par Daniel Roy MAC VAL Musée d’art contemporain du Val-de-Marne, Vitry-sur-Seine 6.06.2021 — 9.01.2022 [Extrait]

Sanaz Sohrabi, Hiding in Plain Sight: Archives of Oil — Emmanuelle Choquette

Ciel variable 120 - FIGURES OF AFFIRMATION | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Emmanuelle Choquette | Artists: Sanaz Sohrabi

[Summer 2022] By Emmanuelle Choquette Centre d’art et de diffusion Clark, Montréal 28.10.2021 — 27.11.2021 [Excerpt] In her practice, Sanaz Sohrabi probes the political structure, the trajectory, and the circulation of the image. She addresses these issues through the prism of the archive as site of representation and as tool of construction of dominant narratives. […]

Michel Boulanger, Dans ces rangs de lignes pressées — Daniel Roy

Ciel variable 120 - FIGURES OF AFFIRMATION | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Daniel Roy | Artists: Michel Boulanger

[Summer 2022] By Daniel Roy Occurrence, espace d’art et d’essai contemporains, Montréal 14.01.2022 — 19.02.2022 [Excerpt] Through his art practice, Michel Boulanger has developed a specific interest in industrial technologies and how they transform the agrarian landscape. His most recent animation video, Dans ces rangs de lignes pressées, presented at Occurrence, portrays the anxieties and […]

Luther Konadu, Portraiture en gestuelles — Nicolas Mavrikakis

Ciel variable 120 - FIGURES OF AFFIRMATION | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Nicolas Mavrikakis | Artists: Luther Konadu

[Summer 2022] By Nicolas Mavrikakis SBC galerie d’art contemporain, Montréal 4.11.2021 — 18.12.2021 [Excerpt] Whatever one might do or say, many people continue to see photography as having an aura of truth. Its authoritative status with regard to the potential to capture reality, a historical construction inherited from the nineteenth century, is a persistent cliché. […]

Michel Saint-Jean. When Documentary Takes a Side— Pierre Dessureault

Ciel variable 120 - FIGURES OF AFFIRMATION | Essays
Authors: Pierre Dessureault

[Summer 2022] By Pierre Dessureault [Excerpt] In the 1960s and 1970s, Quebec was experiencing a radical revision of all kinds of models that had previously been seen as immutable. This major transformation swept away obsolete institutions and fossilized ways of thinking inherited from the Great Darkness of the Duplessis period and laid claim to a […]

Terror Contagion. Surveilling the Surveillance — Edward Pérez-González

Ciel variable 120 - FIGURES OF AFFIRMATION | Essays
Authors: Edward Pérez-González

[Summer 2022] By Edward Pérez-González [Excerpt] It was with my head full of the rave reviews I’d read in the local press – “a show that sends shivers down your spine,” “a blood-curdling exhibition” – that I went to the temporary site of the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal (MAC), in Place Ville Marie, to […]

Prospectus for a Future History of Quebec Photography — Michel Hardy-Vallée

Ciel variable 120 - FIGURES OF AFFIRMATION | Essays
Authors: Michel Hardy-Vallée

[Summer 2022] By Michel Hardy-Vallée [Excerpt] When we try to reach a better understanding of the history of photography in Quebec, we inevitably stumble into three common areas. The first is absence: so, where is this reference book that everyone’s waiting for and no one has written yet? And yet, there are books on the […]

Meryl Mcmaster, As Immense as the Sky — Lori Beavis, The Beginning of Something New

Ciel variable 120 - FIGURES OF AFFIRMATION | Portfolios
Authors: Lori Beavis | Artists: Meryl McMaster

[Summer 2022] By Lori Beavis [Excerpt] I want to plunge into the storage space where Meryl McMaster stores the habiliments that she has created for her performative photographic practice. While there I could closely investigate the cloaks, patterned coats, feathered armbands, hand wraps, plumed plant material, and bird-festooned headwear. Over the past fifteen years, McMaster […]

Jeff Thomas, Indians on Tour — Carolyn Hickey, The Indigenous Map Maker’s Room

Ciel variable 120 - FIGURES OF AFFIRMATION | Portfolios
Authors: Carolyn Hickey | Artists: Jeff Thomas

[Summer 2022] An interview conducted by Carolyn Hickey [Extrait] The exhibition The Indigenous Map Maker’s Room at the Latcham Art Centre1 resurfaced Jeff Thomas’s series Indians on Tour, which he began some twenty years ago. The series has continued to evolve and has generated other, parallel series. In this interview conducted by Carolyn Hickey, the […]

Dana Claxton, Portraits & Regalia — Skeena Reece, It’s Love or a Photograph

Ciel variable 120 - FIGURES OF AFFIRMATION | Portfolios
Authors: Skeena Reece | Artists: Dana Claxton

[Summer 2022] It’s Love or a Photograph – Depends on How You See It By Skeena Reece [Excerpt] The Mustang Suite is a series about more than mobility. Though that’s a great place to start, to introduce you to Dana Claxton’s works; images that include literal modes of transportation are a part of the photographs’ […]

Figures of Affirmation

Ciel variable 120 - FIGURES OF AFFIRMATION | Portfolios
Artists: Dana Claxton, Jeff Thomas, Meryl McMaster

[Summer 2022] Indigenous culture has long been oppressed in this country, but strong proud voices are now speaking out in public and are increasingly being heard. Here, we present three of these voices: they stand out for their use of photography as a central vehicle of their approach. Together, they offer a renewed vision of […]

Visible Everywhere

Ciel variable 120 - FIGURES OF AFFIRMATION | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon | Artists: Dana Claxton, Jeff Thomas, Meryl McMaster

[Summer 2022] By Jacques Doyon Indigenous peoples have been confined to reservations, cut off from their ancestral lands, subjected to forced assimilation in schools, and had their status denied as Métis or urban residents. They have been forbidden to display the signs of their cultures and were long condemned to invisibility. But the situation is […]

Ciel variable 120 – Figures of Affirmation

Ciel variable 120 - FIGURES OF AFFIRMATION

[Summer 2022]

Indigenous culture has long been oppressed in this country, but strong proud voices are now speaking out in public and are increasingly being heard. Here, we present three of these voices: they stand out for their use of photography as a central vehicle of their approach. Together, they offer a renewed vision of Indigenous identity, drawing on both tradition and contemporary realities and stamping a presence everywhere in the territory.

Gregory Halpern, ZZYZX – Louis Perreault

Ciel variable 105 – MONTREALITIES | Book Reviews
Authors: Louis Perreault | Artists: Gregory Halpern

May 18, 2022 [originally published in CV105 in Winter 2017] — In the photography world, the book continues to play an essential role of dissemination. Yet, beyond simply being a tool for promotion of a photographer’s work, the book is seen by many as a creative space on its own…

William A. Ewing, Photographs Are the Eyes of Our Civilization — Jacques Doyon

Ciel variable 119 - AGAINST NATURE | Interviews
Authors: Jacques Doyon, William E. Ewing | Artists: Alejandro Cartagena, Francesco Zizola, Olivier Christinat

[Winter 2022] An interview by Jacques Doyon [Excerpt] Author, exhibition curator, professor, and longtime director of the Musée de l’Élysée (1996– 2010), in Lausanne, William A. Ewing began his career in Montreal; he was the founder of Optica, which he directed from 1972 to 1977. Ewing has been exploring the field of photography for some […]

Valérian Mazataud, liwa mairin, la femme de l’eau — Serge Allaire

Ciel variable 119 - AGAINST NATURE | Book Reviews
Authors: Serge Allaire

[Winter 2022] Montréal, à compte d’auteur, 2021, non paginé By Serge Allaire [Excerpt] Valérian Mazataud’s most recent work takes us on an adventure to the island of Bobel, a huge rock rising out of the Caribbean Sea fifty kilometres off the coast of La Mosquita, one of the last untouched regions on the planet. The […]

Anne-Marie Proulx, Le Jardin d’après — Élisabeth Recurt

Ciel variable 119 - AGAINST NATURE | Book Reviews
Authors: Élisabeth Recurt | Artists: Anne-Marie Proulx

[Winter 2022] Paris, Éditions Loco, 2021, 192 p. By Élisabeth Recurt [Excerpt] Freely inspired by a novel by Anne Hébert,1 Anne-Marie Proulx’s photobook is composed of 125 black-and-white and colour photographs (taken on a 35 mm analogue camera and a cell phone), lines from plays (spoken by the protagonist of the novel, Flora Fontanges), and […]

Martin Désilets — Yannick Marcoux

Ciel variable 119 - AGAINST NATURE | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Yannick Marcoux | Artists: Martin Désilets

[Winter 2022] Les tableaux réunis Musée d’art de Joliette 19.06.2021— 6.09.2021 By Yannick Marcoux [Excerpt] In a poem in his L’art poétique, Nicolas Boileau made a suggestion that has become famous: “Put your work twenty times on the anvil.” It seems that twenty times is not enough for the artist Martin Désilets, who, since 2017, […]

Carlos Ferrand Zavala — Alexis Desgagnés

Ciel variable 119 - AGAINST NATURE | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Alexis Desgagnés | Artists: Carlos Ferrand Zavala

[Winter 2022] SBC, galerie d’art contemporain, Montréal 4.09.2021 — 23.10.2021 By Alexis Desgagnés [Excerpt] Peruvian-born Montreal artist Carlos Ferrand Zavala, recipient of the Bourse de carrière Michel-Brault from the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec in 2015, is known mainly as a director, screenwriter, and cinematographer. Among his latest films are 13, un […]

Catherine Bodmer — Emmanuelle Choquette

Ciel variable 119 - AGAINST NATURE | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Emmanuelle Choquette | Artists: Catherine Bodmer

[Winter 2022] Galerie B-312, Montréal 7.05.2021 — 23.06.2021 By Emmanuelle Choquette [Excerpt] The exhibition Synonymes is an outcome of Catherine Bodmer’s long-term research conducted during residencies in Mexico City between 2010 and 2018. Pairing photography and text, the body of work on display in Galerie B-312’s two exhibition spaces addresses Bodmer’s relationship, developed over time, […]

Françoise Sullivan — Didier Morelli

Ciel variable 119 - AGAINST NATURE | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Didier Morelli | Artists: Françoise Sullivan

[Winter 2022] Galerie de l’UQAM, Montreal 14.05.2021 — 16.07.2021 By Didier Morelli [Excerpt] Even in her nineties, the seminal Quebec interdisciplinary artist Françoise Sullivan never ceases to inspire. Françoise Sullivan: The 1970s, organized by the Galerie de l’UQAM, delves into her experimentation five decades ago, with particular attention to her time in Italy. Filmed and […]

Lorenza Böttner — Fanny Bieth

Ciel variable 119 - AGAINST NATURE | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Fanny Bieth | Artists: Lorenza Böttner

[Winter 2022] Galerie Leonard & Bina Ellen, Montréal 29.04.2021 — 19.06.2021 By Fanny Bieth [Excerpt] Lorenza Böttner: Requiem for the Norm is the first international retrospective exhibition for the Chilean-German artist Lorenza Böttner, a trans person who lost both arms as a child following an accident. Böttner’s practice and life embody, to use the words […]

Dawit L. Petros — Claudia Polledri

Ciel variable 119 - AGAINST NATURE | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Claudia Polledri | Artists: Dawit L. Petros

[Winter 2022] Galerie Bradley Ertaskiran, Montréal 3.09.2021 — 30.10.2021 By Claudia Polledri [Excerpt] Gaps, holes, fissures, and frictions – the title defines the perimeter of the exhibition by Eritrean artist Dawit L. Petros, presented as part of the Momenta 2021 satellite program. In this show, composed of photographs and serigraphs on paper and canvas, Petros, […]

Sylvie Readman, Denis Rioux — Mona Hakim

Ciel variable 119 - AGAINST NATURE | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Mona Hakim | Artists: Denis Rioux, Sylvie Readman

[Winter 2022] Galerie Laroche/Joncas, Montréal 8.09.2021 — 9.10.2021 By Mona Hakim [Excerpt] Presented in a single exhibition space and arranged facing each other, the photographs of Sylvie Readman and Denis Rioux highlight their common concern with the issues and properties of the photographic language within which the primary conditions of the visual and conceptual experience […]

Dawoud Bey — Ariane Noël de Tilly

Ciel variable 119 - AGAINST NATURE | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Ariane Noël de Tilly | Artists: Dawoud Bey

[Winter 2022] Whitney Museum of American Art, New York 17.04.2021 — 3.10.2021 By Ariane Noël de Tilly [Excerpt] Since the very inception of his photographic career, Dawoud Bey has pointed his lens toward people and, especially, marginalized communities. The retrospective of his work presented at the Whitney Museum of American Art highlighted the ethical dimension […]

James Coleman, What Goes Around Comes Around — Stephen Horne

Ciel variable 119 - AGAINST NATURE | Essays
Authors: Stephen Horne | Artists: James Coleman

[Winter 2022] By Stephen Horne “A being racing into the future passes a being racing into the past two footprints perpetually obliterating one another toe to heel, heel to toe.” – W. B. YEATS 1 [Excerpt] James Coleman´s complex cinematic installations disclose the beauty and pleasure of “looking.” The aesthetic experience to which I refer […]

Errance Sans Retour, “They also killed my father” — Pierre Dessureault

Ciel variable 119 - AGAINST NATURE | Essays
Authors: Pierre Dessureault | Artists: Renaud Philippe

[Winter 2022] By Pierre Dessureault [Excerpt] “We are not in front of the images; we are in the middle of them. Like they are in the middle of us. The question is how we circulate among them, how we make them circulate.”1 The life of images, constantly relaunched in various presentation contexts, is core to […]

Et fili ? Cultural Transmission and the Quebec Photobook — Michel Hardy-Vallée

Ciel variable 119 - AGAINST NATURE | Essays
Authors: Michel Hardy-Vallée | Artists: Anne-Marie Proulx, Bertrand Carrière, Charles-Frédérick Ouellet, Donigan Cumming, Florence Le Blanc, Guillaume Simoneau, John Max, Matthieu Brouillard, Michel Campeau, Sylvain Cousineau

[Hiver 2022] By Michel Hardy-Vallée [Excerpt] It’s a lovely image: my father, who had been taking photographs since the 1960s, had given me his Beseler 23C II enlarger. I went to pick it up in order to flesh out my amateur darkroom, and I was thinking about transmission of culture. The caption might have quoted […]

Andreas Rutkauskas, Refuge: After the Fire — Franck Michel, The Resilience of Landscapes

Ciel variable 119 - AGAINST NATURE | Portfolios
Authors: Franck Michel | Artists: Andreas Rutkauskas

[Winter 2022] By Franck Michel The landscape enwraps, penetrates, it is not before one as an object. . . . It is an atmosphere, a sensory halo, and not simply a visual through-line. – DAVID LE BRETON   [Excerpt] The history of landscape photography offers an incomparable source of information on the evolution of territories […]

Thomas Kneubühler, Alpine Signals — Louis Perreault, Without Data Loss

Ciel variable 119 - AGAINST NATURE | Portfolios
Authors: Louis Perreault | Artists: Thomas Kneubühler

[Winter 2022] By Louis Perreault [Excerpt] In the first photograph in Alpine Signals, the immaculate white of a horse’s mane offers a reminder of the clouds that overhang the distant mountains. The blue sky spreads above the shrubs positioned in the centre of the composition, which pick up the colour of the verdant nature in […]

Geneviève Chevalier, Mirement/Towering : La Ménagerie et L’Herbier — Sylvain Campeau, Arranging the Living

Ciel variable 119 - AGAINST NATURE | Portfolios
Authors: Sylvain Campeau | Artists: Geneviève Chevalier

[Winter 2022] By Sylvain Campeau [Excerpt] Over the last few years, artist Geneviève Chevalier has become interested in places and methods of classification used in the natural sciences to inventory and analyze flora and fauna. Menageries were, in a way, the ancestors of museums. They contained both collections and live exotic animals, but as an […]

Against Nature

Ciel variable 119 - AGAINST NATURE | Portfolios
Artists: Andreas Rutkauskas, Geneviève Chevalier, Thomas Kneubühler

[Winter 2022] The title might seem paradoxical, as the artists brought together for this issue’s thematic section are all defenders and lovers of nature and spend a good deal of time in it. But what their works reveal is a “naturality” thoroughly permeated by human activity and entirely shaped by it, implying that its fate […]

Against Nature?

Ciel variable 119 - AGAINST NATURE | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon

[Winter 2022] Par Jacques Doyon The title might seem paradoxical, as the artists brought together for this issue’s thematic section are all defenders and lovers of nature and spend a good deal of time in it. But what their works reveal is a “naturality” thoroughly permeated by human activity and entirely shaped by it, implying […]

Ciel variable 119 – AGAINST NATURE

Ciel variable 119 - AGAINST NATURE

[Winter 2022]

The title Against Nature might seem paradoxical, as the artists brought together for this issue’s thematic section are all defenders and lovers of nature and spend a good deal of time in it. But what their works reveal is a “naturality” thoroughly permeated by human activity and entirely shaped by it, implying that its fate is entirely in our hands.

Marie-Josée Rousseau, At the Crossroads of Photographic Practices — Jérôme Delgado

Ciel variable 118 - EXHIBITING PHOTOGRAPHY | Interviews
Authors: Jérôme Delgado

[Fall 2021] An interview by Jérôme Delgado [Excerpt] After a wide variety of experiences; studying sociology, psychology, management, and art history; jobs in finance and communications; and a trip around the world – thirty countries in three years – Marie­Josée Rousseau opened La Castiglione, the only Quebec gallery specializing in photography, in 2014. Through an […]

Alexis Desgagnés, Ammoniaque — Ève Dorais

Ciel variable 118 - EXHIBITING PHOTOGRAPHY | Book Reviews
Authors: Ève Dorais | Artists: Alexis Desgagnés

[Fall 2021] Montréal, Les Éditions du Renard, 2021, non paginé By Ève Dorais [Excerpt] In an article in an issue of the magazine Elephant devoted to photography,1 Robert Shore notes that in recent decades photography has striven to assert its own materiality. Indeed, artists have found all sorts of ploys to highlight the medium’s materiality […]

La fête : The People Came to Party — Dayna McLeod

Ciel variable 118 - EXHIBITING PHOTOGRAPHY | Book Reviews
Authors: Dayna McLeod

[Fall 2021] Jean-François Prost Publication collaborative Québec, Éditions VU, 2021, 160 pages, français, anglais et portugais By Dayna McLeod [Excerpt] If you’ve missed in­-real­-life parties, being with people, and exhibitions during the pandemic, La Fête is a feast for the heart, head, and soul. The socially distanced isolation of the pandemic brings a chance to […]

Women Street Photographers — Ariane Noël de Tilly

Ciel variable 118 - EXHIBITING PHOTOGRAPHY | Book Reviews
Authors: Ariane Noël de Tilly

[Fall 2021] By Ariane Noël de Tilly [Excerpt] The image chosen to illustrate the cover of Women Street Photographers is certainly striking: a detail from Red Upsweep (2019) by B Jane Levine; the photograph is reproduced in its entirety inside the book. The centre of this truncated image is dominated by the head and shoulders […]

Érika Nimis, Mutants — Christian Roy

Ciel variable 118 - EXHIBITING PHOTOGRAPHY | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Christian Roy | Artists: Érika Nimis

[Fall 2021] Mutants Centre des arts actuels Skol 6.03.2021 — 10.04.2021 By Christian Roy [Excerpt] Érika Nimis, a historian of Africa and its photographic tradition, which she has often covered in Ciel variable, also produces photographic essays about traces of places and abandoned objects. The body of work exhibited at Centre Skol results from an […]

Yann Pocreau, Impermanencies — Daniel Roy

Ciel variable 118 - EXHIBITING PHOTOGRAPHY | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Daniel Roy | Artists: Yann Pocreau

[Fall 2021] Les Impermanents Musée des beaux­arts de Montréal 10.04.2021 — 1.08.2021 By Daniel Roy [Excerpt] Continuing his reflections on the materiality of light, Yann Pocreau presented a corpus of brand-new works at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, the result of research conducted during residencies at the Fonderie Darling (2016–18) and the Mont-Mégantic Observatory […]

Chuck Samuels, Becoming Photography — Sylvain Campeau

Ciel variable 118 - EXHIBITING PHOTOGRAPHY | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Sylvain Campeau | Artists: Chuck Samuels

[Fall 2021] Expression, centre d’exposition de Saint­-Hyacinthe 27.02.2021 — 25.04.2021 Plein sud, centre d’exposition en art actuel à Longueuil 13.03.2021 — 24.04.2021 By Sylvain Campeau [Excerpt] A project deployed in two venues and one monograph, Becoming Photography brings together corpuses produced between 1991 and 2020. At Plein sud are series that have been exhibited before, […]

Capture Photography Festival 2021 — Karen Henry

Ciel variable 118 - EXHIBITING PHOTOGRAPHY | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Karen Henry

[Fall 2021] Capture Photography Festival 2021 Vancouver April 1–30, 2021 By Karen Henry [Excerpt] It’s impossible to review the Capture festival, a rambling aggregation of events in Vancouver that celebrate photography, as a whole. Here, I focus on public art billboards and the major festival commission. Billboards are of a scale to command attention in […]

Paul Walde, Requiem for a Glacier — Reilley Bishop-Stall

Ciel variable 118 - EXHIBITING PHOTOGRAPHY | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Reilley Bishop-Stall | Artists: Paul Walde

[Fall 2021] Requiem for a Glacier Montreal Museum of Fine Arts March 10, 2021–February 27, 2022 By Reilley Bishop-Stall [Excerpt] Paul Walde’s four ­movement oratorio Requiem for a Glacier was originally performed in July, 2013 on a glacier in British Columbia’s Jumbo Valley – or Qat’muk, as it is known by the Ktunaxa First Nation, […]

Emanuel Licha, zo reken — André Lavoie

Ciel variable 118 - EXHIBITING PHOTOGRAPHY | Exhibition reviews
Authors: André Lavoie | Artists: Emanuel Licha

[Fall 2021] Film documentaire, 2021, 85 minutes, français et créole haïtien By André Lavoie [Excerpt] It is said that truth is the first casualty of war. That seems inevitable, as those who wage war often base their actions on lies and feed on propaganda to justify its necessity. War is also staged – hence the […]

Alejandro G. Iñárritu, Carne y Arena — Jean Gagnon

Ciel variable 118 - EXHIBITING PHOTOGRAPHY | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Jean Gagnon | Artists: Alejandro G. Iñárritu

[Fall 2021] Arsenal art contemporain 17.03.2021 — 15.08.2021 By Jean Gagnon [Excerpt] It has long been possible to experience virtual reality works in Montreal,1 and in spring 2021 a “must-see”2 was Carne y Arena (Virtually Present, Physically Invisible) (2017) by Oscar-winning filmmaker Alejandro G. Iñárritu.3 The presentation in Montreal was thanks to the efforts of […]

Meryl McMaster, There Once Was A Song — Stéphanie Hornstein

Ciel variable 118 - EXHIBITING PHOTOGRAPHY | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Stéphanie Hornstein | Artists: Meryl McMaster

[Fall 2021] Occurrence, espace d’art et d’essai McCord Museum, Montreal April 2 — August 15, 2021 By Stéphanie Hornstein [Excerpt] Starlings have pride of place in Meryl McMaster’s heart. In 2013, she produced a photographic triptych, Murmur, that shows a young woman, the artist herself, gently twirling within a swarm of paper starlings. Grounded in […]

Luc Bourdon. Playing with Images and Sounds — Nicole Gingras

Ciel variable 118 - EXHIBITING PHOTOGRAPHY | Essays
Authors: Nicole Gingras | Artists: Luc Bourdon

[Fall 2021] An Interview by Nicole Gingras [Excerpt] A major figure in video art and film in Canada, Luc Bourdon has worked with various independent organizations in Quebec, including Vidéographe, Productions Réalisations Indépendantes de Montréal, Cinéma Parallèle, and the Festival du nouveau cinéma de Montréal. Since the 1980s, he has produced some fifty works – […]

David Tomas, Speech and silence — Vincent Bonin

Ciel variable 118 - EXHIBITING PHOTOGRAPHY | Essays
Authors: Vincent Bonin | Artists: David Tomas

[Fall 2021] By Vincent Bonin [Excerpt] Invited by Ciel variable to follow up on the reassessment of works by the artist and anthropologist David Tomas (1950–2019) started in the recent exhibition Moving Through Time and Space,1 Vincent Bonin offers a broader survey of Tomas’s intellectual trajectory and reflects on the presence of silence in some […]

Moyra Davey. The Personal Narrative and the Art of Fragmented Anti-dogma Narration — Nicolas Mavrikakis

Ciel variable 118 - EXHIBITING PHOTOGRAPHY | Essays
Authors: Nicolas Mavrikakis | Artists: Moyra Davey

[Fall 2021] By Nicolas Mavrikakis [Excerpt] Is there such a thing as left-wing extremism? In recent few months, various events have highlighted the growing hold on the left of can- cel culture – which should, rather, be called erasure or obliteration culture – a way of doing things associated with dictatorships (on the right and […]

Robert Graham, Three Montréal Photographers + — Zoë Tousignant, Robert Graham’s History of Photography in Montreal

Ciel variable 118 - EXHIBITING PHOTOGRAPHY | Portfolios
Authors: Zoë Tousignant | Artists: Donigan Cumming, Michel Campeau, Tom Gibson

[Fall 2021] By Zoë Tousignant [Excerpt] There are those of us who believe that what lies beyond the photographic frame is as interesting as what is contained within it. This is not founded on a sentiment that the photo­ graph alone is not enough. Quite the contrary: it comes from a place of such deep […]

Amandine Alessandra, Marine Baudrillard, Carole Lévesque, Katharina Niemeyer et Magali Uhl, Écran total — Edward Pérez­-González, The Absence Machine

Ciel variable 118 - EXHIBITING PHOTOGRAPHY | Portfolios
Authors: Edward Pérez-González | Artists: Charlie Doyon

[Fall 2021] By Edward Pérez­-González [Excerpt] The reflections on screens and on relations between image and reality offered by the philosopher Jean Baudrillard (1929– 2007) in his essay Écran total served as a framework for the staging of the exhibition of the same name, presented by the Centre de design at UQAM1 and organized by […]

William A. Ewing et Holly Roussell, Civilization – Quelle époque ! — Julie Martin, A Photographic Mapping of the Twenty­First Century

Ciel variable 118 - EXHIBITING PHOTOGRAPHY | Portfolios
Authors: Julie Martin | Artists: Massimo Vitali

[Fall 2021] By Julie Martin [Excerpt] As far back as the 1990s, American literary critic Fredric Jameson was noting that the world is non-narrative and unrepresentable.1 Drawing an analogy with the urban planner Kevin Lynch’s book The Image in the City, Jameson showed that because we, as urban dwellers, are incapable of situating our- selves […]

Exhibiting Photography

Ciel variable 118 - EXHIBITING PHOTOGRAPHY | Portfolios

[Fall 2021] The thematic section in this issue presents three exhibitions that show how photography can actively contribute to shaping a critical vision of the world. By bringing together a large number of images and points of view, the first sets out to offer an overall sense of the changes affecting global civilization. Inspired by […]

Exhibiting Photography to Talk about Global Changes

Ciel variable 118 - EXHIBITING PHOTOGRAPHY | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon

[Fall 2021] By Jacques Doyon The thematic section in this issue presents three recent exhibitions that show how photography can actively contribute to shaping a vision of the world. The first, which features quantity and diversity of images, indicates how an accumulation of points of view and subjects addressed makes it possible to override the […]

Ciel variable 118 – EXHIBITING PHOTOGRAPHY

Ciel variable 118 - EXHIBITING PHOTOGRAPHY

[Fall 2021]

The thematic section in this issue presents three exhibitions that show how photography can contribute to shaping a critical vision of the world. The first sets out to offer an overall sense of the changes affecting global civilization. The second contrasts traditional photography with its mutant, digital, and interactive form. The third is the career of a photography critic whose vision is fed by the act of collecting.

Bertrand Carrière, Learning photography from books — Serge Allaire

Ciel variable 117 - SHIFTED | Interviews
Authors: Serge Allaire | Artists: Bertrand Carrière

[Summer 2021] Bertrand Carrière Learning photography from books An Interview by Serge Allaire Over the last forty years, Bertrand Carrière has produced a personal and varied body of photographic work. His photographs have been exhibited in Quebec, Canada, Europe, and China, and he is represented by Galerie Simon Blain Montreal and the Stephen Bulger Gallery […]

Ron Jude — Louis Perreault

Ciel variable 117 - SHIFTED | Book Reviews
Authors: Louis Perreault | Artists: Ron Jude

[Summer 2021] 12 Hz Ron Jude Londres, Mack Books, 2020, 128 p. Par Louis Perreault [Excerpt] Even before we open its cover, 12 Hz seems to vibrate on the table. As we plunge into the ice, rock, and powerful sea currents that mark out the pages of this book by American photographer Ron Jude, we […]

Une histoire mondiale des femmes photographes — Claudia Polledri

Ciel variable 117 - SHIFTED | Book Reviews
Authors: Claudia Polledri

[Summer 2021] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. Histoire mondiale des femmes photographes Sous la direction de Luce Lebart et Marie Robert, Paris, Textuel, 2020, 506 p. Par Claudia Polledri (En français seulement)   See the magazine for the […]

Rejouer le vivant – Amélie Giguère

Ciel variable 117 - SHIFTED | Book Reviews
Authors: Amélie Giguère, Anne Bénichou

[Summer 2021] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. Rejouer le vivant. Les reenactments, des pratiques culturelles et artistiques (in)actuelles Anne Bénichou Dijon, Les presses du réel, 2020, 421 p. Par Amélie Giguère (En français seulement)   See the magazine […]

Richard Ibghy & Marilou Lemmens, Querelle entre deux puces pour savoir à qui appartient le chien sur lequel elles vivent — Noémie Fortin

Ciel variable 117 - SHIFTED | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Noémie Fortin | Artists: Richard Ibghy & Marilou Lemmens

[Summer 2021] Richard Ibghy & Marilou Lemmens Querelle entre deux puces pour savoir à qui appartient le chien sur lequel elles vivent Fondation Grantham pour l’art et l’environnement, Saint-Edmond-de-Grantham 27.09.2020 — 26.06.2021 Par Noémie Fortin [Excerpt] Presented at the Grantham Foundation for the Arts and the Environment, the exhibition Querelle entre deux puces pour savoir […]

John Akomfrah, Vertigo Sea — Jill Glessing

Ciel variable 117 - SHIFTED | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Jill Glessing | Artists: John Akomfrah

[Summer 2021] John Akomfrah Vertigo Sea The Design Exchange Trading Floor, Nuit Blanche, Toronto 2.10.2016 Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal 10.02.2021 – 4.04.2021 By Jill Glessing [Excerpt] The sea, wild and wet, the womb that bore us, from which we slithered eons ago. We return to that birthplace – for crossings, sustenance, profit, and pleasure. […]

Sara A. Tremblay — Paule Mackrous

Ciel variable 117 - SHIFTED | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Paule Mackrous | Artists: Sara A. Tremblay

[Summer 2021] Tout t’empêche Centre d’exposition de l’Université de Montréal, en ligne / online By Paule Mackrous While we are recluses in our regions, neighbourhoods, and homes, the pandemic has shrunk the parameters of our living environment, and we are constantly confronted with its limits. It’s what author Cristina Comencini has called “a test of […]

Gagnon-Forest, Séquence aérienne — Élisabeth Recurt

Ciel variable 117 - SHIFTED | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Élisabeth Recurt | Artists: Gagnon-Forest

[Summer 2021] Maison de la culture Claude-Léveillée, Montréal 13.12.2020 — 14.02.2021 Par Élisabeth Recurt [Extrait] Here, the duo of Gagnon-Forest (Mathieu Gagnon and Mathilde Forest) presents a series of six large-format photographs (inkjet prints on film, backlit), articulated and paced by three dualities. Installed in the large windows on the lateral wall of Maison de […]