Rebecca Bair and Karice Mitchell, Together/Apart – Neil Price

Ciel variable 123 – THE POWER OF INTIMACY | Critiques d'expositions, Exhibition Reviews

[Summer 2023] By Neil Price Susan Hobbs Gallery, Toronto 03.12.2022 — 14.01.2023 [Excerpt] Black feminists have long been concerned with what Patricia Hill Collins refers to as “controlling images.” They have consistently pointed out (and called out) ways in which such images have hamper and harm Black women’s struggle for freedom by reducing their experiences […]

Christian Marclay, A Retrospective – Stephen Horne

Ciel variable 123 – THE POWER OF INTIMACY | Critiques d'expositions, Exhibition Reviews
Authors: Stephen Horne | Artists: Christian Marclay

[Summer 2023] By Stephen Horne Centre Pompidou, Paris 16.11.2022 — 22.02.2023 [Excerpt] There is a song written and performed by Paul McCartney in 1968 that provides a succinct introduction to the work and career of Swiss-American artist Christian Marclay (b. 1955). It’s simple lyric, repeated – “Why don’t we do it in the road” – […]

Angela Grauerholz, The Empty S(h)elf – Gabrielle Sarthou

Ciel variable 123 – THE POWER OF INTIMACY | Critiques d'expositions, Exhibition Reviews
Authors: Gabrielle Sarthou | Artists: Angela Grauerholz

[Summer 2023] Gabrielle Sarthou Occurrence, Montréal 4.11.2022 — 17.12.2022 [Excerpt] Despite its title, this second iteration of Angela Grauerholz’s installation The Empty S(h)elf, presented at Galerie Occurrence in Montréal, is not at all empty: it is polymorphous and dense, at the intersection between language and image, words and thoughts. We discover it fortuitously, as we […]

Disraeli Revisited: Chronicle of an Event in Quebec Photography — Fanny Bieth

Ciel variable 123 – THE POWER OF INTIMACY | Critiques d'expositions, Exhibition Reviews
Authors: Fanny Bieth | Artists: Claire Beaugrand-Champagne, Michel Campeau, Roger Charbonneau

[Summer 2023] By Fanny Bieth Musée McCord Stewart, Montréal 28.10.2022 — 19.02.2023 [Excerpt] Commemorating an experiment conducted fifty years ago, the exhibition Disraeli Revisited: Chronicle of an Event in Quebec Photography is the result of an extraordinary collaboration between the team at the McCord Stewart Museum and those involved in the original project. The show […]

Isabelle Hayeur, Histoires d’eau – Baptiste Grison

Ciel variable 123 – THE POWER OF INTIMACY | Critiques d'expositions
Artists: Isabelle Hayeur

[Summer 2023] By Baptiste Grison Musée du Bas-Saint-Laurent, Rivière-du-Loup 14.10.2022 — 05.02.2023 [Excerpt] The Musée du Bas-Saint-Laurent (MBSL) has built its 2022–23 program of activities, exhibitions, and workshops around different environmental issues. A high point is undoubtedly the exhibition Histoires d’eau, a survey of recent works by the Lanaudière-based photographer Isabelle Hayeur. It is worth […]

Michel Huneault Incipit – COVID-19 — Philippe Depairon

Ciel variable 123 – THE POWER OF INTIMACY | Critiques d'expositions, Exhibition Reviews
Authors: Philippe Depairon | Artists: Michel Huneault

[Summer 2023] By Philippe Depairon Musée McCord Stewart, Montréal 16.09.2022 — 22.01.2023 [Excerpt] How do we remember the recent COVID-19 pandemic? And what do we remember? In a recent issue of Ciel variable, Michel Hardy-Vallée underlined, behind the Legault government’s injunction to take walks (for our health) and stay home (for the health of others), […]

Jessica Eaton, Mariphasa Lupine Lumina — Daniel Fiset

Ciel variable 123 – THE POWER OF INTIMACY | Critiques d'expositions, Exhibition Reviews
Authors: Daniel Fiset | Artists: Jessica Eaton

[Summer 2023] By Daniel Fiset Bradley Ertaskiran, Montréal 10.11.2022 — 17.12.2022 [Excerpt] Although Jessica Eaton is best known for her photographic series that establish a formal dialogue between geometric abstraction and modernist painting, a new body of work presented in late 2022 at Galerie Bradley Ertaskiran introduced an entirely unexpected motif into her practice. The […]

Fiona Tan, Travel Stories – Ariane Noël de Tilly

Ciel variable 123 – THE POWER OF INTIMACY | Essays
Authors: Ariane Noël de Tilly | Artists: Fiona Tan

[Summer 2023] Fiona Tan, Travel Stories By Ariane Noël de Tilly [Excerpt] Travel and the human relationship with time, nature, and history are among the themes that Fiona Tan most often addresses in her work. Born in Pekanbaru, Indonesia, Tan grew up in Australia and then moved to Amsterdam, where she studied at the Gerrit […]

Phyllis Lambert, A Way of Life – Michel Hardy-Vallée

Ciel variable 123 – THE POWER OF INTIMACY | Essays
Authors: Michel Hardy-Vallée | Artists: Phyllis Lambert

[Summer 2023] Phyllis Lambert, A Way of Life By Michel Hardy-Vallée [Excerpt] Photography is inextricable from Phyllis Lambert’s career. Architectural surveys, studies of urban space, activism, advertising, project documentation, archives, media relations, and exhibition catalogues are based on this tool, which is as essential to modern life as con- crete. Nevertheless, it is only in […]

Photography and Ukraine, Keeping Eyes Open to the War – Érika Nimis

Ciel variable 123 – THE POWER OF INTIMACY | Essays
Authors: Erika Nimis

[Summer 2023] Photography and Ukraine, Keeping Eyes Open to the War By Érika Nimis [Excerpt] Since February 24, 2022, when Russia instigated its full-scale military assault on Ukraine, there has been a constant ow of images of the conflict, both via traditional media outlets and on social networks. This is perhaps the first war to […]

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 […]