Ciel variable 83 - MEDIUM : MAGAZINES | Exhibition Reviews
Authors: Sylvain Campeau | Artists: Thomas Kneubühler
[Fall 2009] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. Projex-Mtl Galerie, Montréal Du 30 avril au 20 juin 2009
Ciel variable 83 - MEDIUM : MAGAZINES | Exhibition Reviews
Authors: Emily Falvey | Artists: Tony Fouhse
[Fall 2009] iPs Gallery Montreal June 6 to 27, 2009 Crack cocaine is the classic drug of addiction nightmares: it gets you high for five or ten minutes, and then haunts you for the rest of your life. The most addictive form of any drug, crack turns most of its users into dependents, the majority […]
Ciel variable 83 - MEDIUM : MAGAZINES | Exhibition Reviews
Authors: Cyril Thomas | Artists: Harun Farocki, Rodney Graham
[Fall 2009] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. Jeu de Paume, Paris Du 7 avril au 7 juin 2009
Ciel variable 83 - MEDIUM : MAGAZINES | Exhibition Reviews
Authors: James D. Campbell | Artists: Manon De Pauw
[Fall 2009] Galerie de l’UQAM, Montreal February 27 to March 28, 2009 Manon De Pauw practices a corporeal poetics as inventive and involute in its physical articulation as it is varied and inviting in its philosophical approach. Her manner of thinking the body – the “universal thing” – sheds light on the meaning of corporeality […]
Ciel variable 83 - MEDIUM : MAGAZINES | Essays
Authors: Maxime Coulombe | Artists: Joachim Koester
[Fall 2009] Joachim Koester photographs, and sometimes films, invisible events. Since the mid-1990s, he has sought out places that history seems to have touched, then deserted, and finally left to fade away. He sees himself as an archaeologist of the intangible, and thus he asks a question both beautiful and disturbing: Once an event is […]
Ciel variable 83 - MEDIUM : MAGAZINES | Essays
Authors: Zoë Tousignant
[Fall 2009] What images does the expression “photographic modernism in Canada” call to mind? If you are conversant with early-twentieth-century Canadian photography, the pictures of John Vanderpant, the Dutch-born Vancouver-based photographer who was the subject of an exhibition presented at the National Gallery of Canada in 1976, will likely be conjured. The photographic production of […]
Ciel variable 83 - MEDIUM : MAGAZINES | Portfolios
Authors: Adam Carr | Artists: Ron Terada
[Fall 2009] Defile (2003), by Ron Terada, is a single-issue artist’s magazine that deals with advertising as an intrinsic component of the art world: the magazine is composed exclusively of ads. Produced by Art Metropole and YYZ Books, this project featured the main art magazines from Canada and other countries in exchange for the publication […]
Ciel variable 83 - MEDIUM : MAGAZINES | Portfolios
Authors: Martha Langford | Artists: Michael Snow
[Fall 2009] Repeat Offender (1986), by Michael Snow, is a reprint, inverted and in black and white, of a Penthouse portfolio. First published in the now-defunct Toronto photography magazine Photo Communique, this project was produced upon invitation of Elke Town for an issue with the themes of mass mediation and appropriation. In the context of […]
Ciel variable 83 - MEDIUM : MAGAZINES | Portfolios
Authors: Anne Bénichou | Artists: Christian Boltanski
[Fall 2009] Signal (2004), by Christian Boltanski, is a series of colour plates taken from the magazine Signal, a propaganda organ of the Nazi regime issued bimonthly from April 1940 to March 1945 with a print run of 2.5 million copies. Excerpted from the original page sequences, these plates juxtapose portrayals of war and culture that […]
Ciel variable 83 - MEDIUM : MAGAZINES | Portfolios
Artists: Hans-Peter Feldmann
[Fall 2009] profil without words (2000), by Hans-Peter Feldmann, is a replica of a news magazine from which the text has been removed so that only the photographs remain, in their original sequence and positioning on the pages. Making the images talk for themselves, this project reveals the visual formatting of current affairs produced by […]
Ciel variable 83 - MEDIUM : MAGAZINES | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon | Artists: Christian Boltanski, Hans-Peter Feldmann, Michael Snow, Ron Terada
[Fall 2009] by Jacques Doyon What do the images in a magazine say? What is revealed by the reiteration of certain types of images – as well as their format, positioning, and grouping? Photographs are central to the definition of magazines, often equal in importance to textual content. For the image, the magazine goes beyond […]
[Fall 2009 – Winter 2010] Taken as a whole, what do the images that make up a magazine say? What do their format and positioning reveal? Artists appropriate, divert, or exaggerate the content and layout of existing magazines, seeking to make manifest how the image’s share of the page is structured and tease out […]
Ciel variable 82 – PUBLIC ART | Interviews
Authors: Gaëlle Morel, Jacques Doyon
[Summer 2009] Gaëlle Morel, guest curator for Le Mois de la Photo à Montréal 2009, is a member of the board of directors of the Société française de photographie and of the editorial committee of Études photographiques. She has published Le photoreportage d’auteur. L’institution culturelle de la photographie en France depuis les années 1970 (Paris: […]
Ciel variable 82 – PUBLIC ART | Exhibition Reviews
Authors: Vincent Bonin | Artists: Silvia Kolbowski
[Summer 2009] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. Galerie Leonard et Bina Ellen, Montréal 30 janvier au 7 mars 2009
Ciel variable 82 – PUBLIC ART | Exhibition Reviews
Authors: John K. Grande | Artists: Paul-Antoine Pichard
[Summer 2009] Galerie d’art du Centre Culturel Université de Sherbrooke January 12 to February 22, 2009 Previously exhibited at Cirque du Soleil’s TOHU Espace SSQ, Paul-Antoine Pichard’s photographs of people who live amid trash, in the scarred landscapes that they are a part of, reveal scarred, aged, disfigured victims of the conditions imposed on them […]
Ciel variable 82 – PUBLIC ART | Exhibition Reviews
Authors: Sylvain Campeau | Artists: Carlos & Jason Sanchez
[Summer 2009] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. Maison des arts de Laval Du 27 septembre au 24 novembre 2008 Commissaire : Madeleine Therrien
Ciel variable 82 – PUBLIC ART | Exhibition Reviews
Authors: Gary Michael Dault | Artists: Roger Ballen
[Summer 2009] OCAD Professional Gallery, Toronto March 5 – May 31, 2009 Everything is decay in Roger Ballen’s photographs: floors, walls, toothless mouths, and lank, rancid hair. Their only “beauty” (as we warily call it) – purloined from painterly, graffiti-wired photographs of the past (Siskind, Brassai, etc.) – is inventively and mercilessly imposed, in the […]
Ciel variable 82 – PUBLIC ART | Exhibition Reviews
Authors: René Viau | Artists: Bas Jan Ader
[Summer 2009] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. Dazibao, centre de photographies actuelles, Montréal Du 8 janvier au 21 février 2009 Commissariat : France Choinière
Ciel variable 82 – PUBLIC ART | Exhibition Reviews
Authors: James D. Campbell | Artists: Thomas Corriveau
[Summer 2009] Galerie Graff November 13 to December 20, 2008 We are living in a telematically attuned present tense. We are bombarded, even besieged, by endless streaming images and data feeds coming in from all sides, all the time. How we fend off the barrage or negotiate détente with it shapes the condition of our […]
Ciel variable 82 – PUBLIC ART | Exhibition Reviews
Authors: Sylvain Campeau | Artists: Reno Salvail
[Summer 2009] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. Centre VU Du 10 octobre au 9 novembre 2008
Ciel variable 82 – PUBLIC ART | Exhibition Reviews
Authors: Guy Sioui Durand | Artists: Arthur Renwick, Dana Claxton, Jeff Thomas, Shelley Niro
[Summer 2009] Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography at the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa October 31, 2008 – March 22, 2009 What if sacred masks and the geopolitical pomp of costumes had preceded posed portraits and scenes for the camera? Then, in the photographic gaze, not only would there be different works, but there would […]
Ciel variable 82 – PUBLIC ART | Essays
Authors: Martha Langford
[Summer 2009] The National Gallery of Canada (NGC), under the direction of Marc Mayer, has recently announced that the Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography (CMCP) will no longer occupy its building at 1 Rideau Canal. In fact, the building will no longer be a public space for the arts. It has been handed over to […]
Ciel variable 82 – PUBLIC ART | Essays
Authors: Stéphane Bouchard
[Summer 2009] by Stéphane Bouchard Of all the creative support programs, Quebec’s policy for the integration of the arts with architecture and the environment (commonly known as the 1 percent program) offers some of the best visibility, as well as terrific financial support, to artists. This program allots unequalled sums to bring contemporary art into […]
Ciel variable 82 – PUBLIC ART | Essays
Authors: Johanna Mizgala | Artists: Brian Merrett, David Miller, Laurie Kang, Louise Abbott, Nicholas Hoban, Notman & Sandham, William Notman, William Notman & Son, Zoe Yuristy
[Summer 2009] Relevance is a word that permeates discussions about the role of museums within the social fabric of community. As repositories, museums have a primary function of cultivation not only of objects but also of a public to engage with them. Museums amass, describe, preserve, and, ultimately, display facets of their contents, arranged and […]
Ciel variable 82 – PUBLIC ART | Essays
Authors: Stephen Horne | Artists: Ken Lum, Krzysztof Wodiczko, Rebecca Belmore
[Summer 2009] In Montreal, as in many cities around the world, works of art have often been placed in “public” urban spaces. In some cases, the placement of works is accomplished through channels of bureaucratic control or corporate interest, while in other cases artists have thought of their actions as interventions in those spheres, even […]
Ciel variable 82 – PUBLIC ART | Essays
Authors: Suzanne Paquet | Artists: Jean-François Cantin, Ken Lum, Michel Lemieux, Nicolas Baier, Thomas Kneubühler, Victor Pilon
[Summer 2009] The world identifies with the quintessence of photographs. This identification does not occur for no reason. For the world itself is composed of a photographic face. . . . the world has become the photographic present, and the photographic present is fully perpetuated. ⎯ Siegfried Kracauer, 19271 Although photographs are generally flat, they […]
Ciel variable 82 – PUBLIC ART | Portfolios
Authors: Patrice Loubier | Artists: Peter Gnass
[Summer 2009] Last autumn, Peter Gnass produced an intervention in the form of a temporary posting on the façades of a dozen Montreal cultural sites (galleries, museums, studios, art schools). The poster featured a long band of close-up pictures of ten statues, seen from the back, on which was superimposed a series of letters that […]
Ciel variable 82 – PUBLIC ART | Portfolios
Authors: Bernard Vallée, Pierre Anctil | Artists: ATSA
[Summer 2009] ATSA (Action terroriste socialement acceptable, or Socially Acceptable Terrorist Action), a collective founded in 1997 by artists Pierre Allard and Annie Roy, is well known for its public interventions. Every year since 1998, it has produced State of Emergency, an urban refugee camp for Montreal’s homeless. In general, the collective’s interventions question the […]
Ciel variable 82 – PUBLIC ART | Portfolios
Authors: Jacques Doyon | Artists: Adad Hannah, Alexandre Castonguay, Carlos & Jason Sanchez, Christophe Beauregard, Clara Gutsche, Denis Farley, Éric Tabuchi, Florian Böhm, Geneviève Cadieux, Isabelle Hayeur, Jessica Auer, Josée Pedneault, Marie-Jeanne Musiol, Max Wright, Neil Budzinski, Raymonde April, Roberto Pellegrinuzzi, Ron Terada, Suzanne Opton
[Summer 2009] by Jacques Doyon For several decades, contemporary art has been on display in the public spaces of Quebec’s urban areas, thanks to the creation of public art programs. Photography was long excluded from these programs, and even today it has limited visibility. Some initiatives have been undertaken in recent years, however, that stand […]
Ciel variable 82 – PUBLIC ART | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon
[Summer 2009] by Jacques Doyon This issue offers some preliminary observations on the presence of art photography in urban public art. When we think of “public art,” the governmental public art programs in effect in Quebec and Montreal for several decades immediately spring to mind. Photography, however, has not been well represented in these programs. […]