Ciel variable 94 – PUBLIC ART | Book Reviews
Authors: Alexis Desgagnés
February 5, 2018 [originally published in French in CV94 in Spring 2013] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.
Ciel variable 94 – PUBLIC ART | Book Reviews
Authors: Felicity Tayler
February 8, 2018 [originally published in CV94 in Spring 2013] — The title phrase of this catalogue, Light Years, is a pun on an oft-misused term. Although widely thought to refer to a measurement of time, it is actually an astronomic unit measuring the distance travelled by light over one year. What meanings can this term have when applied to a historical survey exhibition of photographic practices around 1970? Aside from the obvious…
Ciel variable 94 – PUBLIC ART | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Andrea Carson | Artists: Marie-Hélène Cousineau, Michael Snow
February 12, 2018 [originally published in CV94 in Spring 2013] — Curator Peggy Gale and Ryerson Image Centre director Doina Popescu smartly chose to inaugurate Ryerson University’s new building and gallery with an exhibition specifically about “The Archive.” In this case, the focus was the world-renowned Black Star Collection, comprising over 290,000 photojournalistic prints, which had been donated anonymously to Ryerson University in 2005.
Ciel variable 94 – PUBLIC ART | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Christelle Proulx | Artists: Charles-Antoine Blais-Métivier, Serge-Olivier Rondeau
February 14, 2018 [originally published in French in CV94 in Spring 2013] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.
Ciel variable 94 – PUBLIC ART | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Gentiane La France | Artists: Birthe Piontek
February 19, 2018 [originally published in French in CV94 in Spring 2013] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.
Ciel variable 94 – PUBLIC ART | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Stephen Horne | Artists: Lorna Bauer
February 21, 2018 [originally published in CV94 in Spring 2013] — The title of Lorna Bauer’s exhibition at Galerie Nicolas Robert offers a simple paradigm for what she explores with her series of photographs. Bauer initially sets us up for a documentary-style tour of some storefronts in New York’s celebrated garment district. Storefronts have been a tried-and-true subject for photographers since the early days of the technology…
Ciel variable 94 – PUBLIC ART | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Sylvain Campeau | Artists: Alain Laframboise
February 26, 2018 [originally published in French in CV94 in Spring 2013] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.
Ciel variable 94 – PUBLIC ART | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Manon Tourigny | Artists: Jacynthe Carrier
February 28, 2018 [originally published in French in CV94 in Spring 2013] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.
Ciel variable 94 – PUBLIC ART | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Pierre Rannou | Artists: Robert Duchesnay
March 5, 2018 [originally published in French in CV94 in Spring 2013] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.
Ciel variable 94 – PUBLIC ART | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Jérôme Delgado | Artists: Caroline Hayeur, Jean-François Leblanc
March 7, 2018 [originally published in French in CV94 in Spring 2013] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.
Ciel variable 94 – PUBLIC ART | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Anne-Marie St-Jean Aubre | Artists: Milutin Gubash
March 12, 2018 [originally published in French in CV94 in Spring 2013] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.
Ciel variable 94 – PUBLIC ART | Essays
Artists: Alain Paiement, Angela Grauerholz, Chuck Samuels, Gabor Szilasi
[Spring/summer 2013] Works created for the first Ciel variable fund-raising campaign This campaign is based on the idea of bringing together a collector and a photographer to create an original artwork on the theme “the spirit of a place” – a place selected by the collector and interpreted by the artist. The exercise offers a […]
Ciel variable 94 – PUBLIC ART | Essays
Authors: Blake Fitzpatrick | Artists: Omer Fast
March 14, 2018 [originally published in CV94 in Spring 2013] — Omer Fast is not a documentarian, but his solo exhibition at The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery did draw attention to the strategies of an artist working, as Jeff Wall put it, “near documentary.” Spanning the last decade, the exhibition referenced sites of recent global conflict with three video works that quoted documentary or journalistic convention…
Ciel variable 94 – PUBLIC ART | Essays
Authors: Pierre Dessureault | Artists: Richard Baillargeon
March 19, 2018 [originally published in CV94 in Spring 2013] — Richard Baillargeon’s Anticoste is presented as a complex composition of heterogeneous materials organized in groups to create vast networks of significances, echoes, and resonances and to constitute a reflection both on the history of Anticosti and on the narrative processes implemented in knowledge and the relationship with the past.
Ciel variable 94 – PUBLIC ART | Portfolios
Authors: Pierre Rannou | Artists: Miki Gingras, Patrick Dionne
March 21, 2018 [originally published in CV94 in Spring 2013] — Far from fitting the image of picture chasers and big-time reporters, Patrick Dionne and Miki Gingras seem, rather, to present themselves as pedagogues of photography, as their projects are intended both to document the contemporary world and to teach the rudiments of photography…
Ciel variable 94 – PUBLIC ART | Portfolios
Authors: Emmanuel Hermange | Artists: Dominique Auerbacher
March 26, 2018 [originally published in CV94 in Spring 2013] — Dominique Auerbacher’s early career was bound up in the emergence of photographic commissions devoted to landscape in Europe, starting with the Mission photographique de la Datar, which brought her to the public eye in the mid-1980s. She sparked a lively debate by choosing, against all expectations, to photograph a number of major European cities…
Ciel variable 94 – PUBLIC ART | Portfolios
Authors: Sylvain Campeau | Artists: Nicolas Baier
March 26, 2018 [originally published in CV94 in Spring 2013] — To judge by his works, Nicolas Baier has never been anything but a photographer, as these works are replete with all the potentialities, components, and mechanisms of the medium. This is so even when the works he creates are not photographic…
Ciel variable 94 – PUBLIC ART | Portfolios
Artists: Dominique Auerbacher, Miki Gingras, Nicolas Baier, Patrick Dionne
[Spring/summer 2013] A thematic section on public art featuring the works of nicolas baier, dominique auerbacher, and patrick dionne and Miki gingras, highlighting the issues of community affirmation in the public space and the revelation, or contestation, of its customs and regulations. Somewhere between group portrait, “objective” self-portrait, and urban anti-aesthetic . . . NICOLAS […]
Ciel variable 94 – PUBLIC ART | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon | Artists: Dominique Auerbacher, Nicolas Baier
[Spring/summer 2013] In this issue, we return to the question of public art, a subject we previously addressed in issues 82 and 90. The artworks chosen for this portfolio stand out for the acuity with which their context for integration has been managed. Each of these artworks, in its way, offers an exemplary response to […]
[Spring-Summer 2013] A thematic section on public art featuring the works of Nicolas Baier, Dominique Auerbacher, and Patrick Dionne and Miki Gingras, highlighting the issues of community affirmation in the public space and the revelation, or contestation, of its customs and regulations. Some where between group portrait, “objective” selfportrait, and urban antiaesthetic . . […]
Ciel variable 93 – FORENSICS | Interviews
Authors: Alexis Desgagnés, Joan Fontcuberta | Artists: Joan Fontcuberta
November 6, 2017 [originally published in CV93 in Winter 2013] — After forty years of international recognition and numerous exhibitions, today catalonian artist Joan Fontcuberta is a major voice in the discourse on photographic issues in the era of Web 2.0. In 2011, he was co-curator of the controversial exhibition “From Here On,” presented at the rencontres d’Arles…
Ciel variable 93 – FORENSICS | Book Reviews
Authors: Sonia Pelletier
[Winter 2013] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. Par Sonia Pelletier Light Years: Conceptual Art and the Photograph, 1964-1977 (Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago; New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012; edited by Matthew S. Witkovsky, 264 pp., Eng.) Le langage des […]
Ciel variable 93 – FORENSICS | Book Reviews
Authors: Bernard Schütze
November 8, 2017 [originally published in CV93 in Winter 2013] — Live rightly, die, die…, the book that accompanies the two-part exhibition organized by the artist-curator David Tomas at Dazibao, is no ordinary exhibition catalogue with its requisite visual documentation and explanatory theoretical essay. Live rightly, die, die… does in fact contain ample visuals and a lengthy essay, but instead of cataloguing and contextualizing the exhibition the book is an experimental extension and integral part of the overall Live rightly, die, die… project. The unusual nature of the publication is made immediately apparent as one opens the book and flips to the page facing the title page…
Ciel variable 93 – FORENSICS | Book Reviews
Authors: Carol Payne
November 13, 2017 [originally published in CV93 in Winter 2013] — Mutations : Perspectives sur la photographie / Perspectives on Photography, the major publication marking the 2011 edition of the Paris Photo biennial exhibition, is an omnibus collection of current thinking about photography theory and recent photo-based art. Edited by Chantal Pontbriand, founder and editor of the now defunct (and still much lamented) Montreal-based journal Parachute…
Ciel variable 93 – FORENSICS | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Catherine Lebel Ouellet | Artists: Ivan Binet
November 15, 2017 [originally published in French in CV93 in Winter 2013] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.
Ciel variable 93 – FORENSICS | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Guy Sioui Durand | Artists: Edward Curtis
November 20, 2017 [originally published in French in CV93 in Winter 2013] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.
Ciel variable 93 – FORENSICS | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Eloi Desjardins | Artists: Larry Clark
November 22, 2017 [originally published in French in CV93 in Winter 2013] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.
Ciel variable 93 – FORENSICS | Exhibition reviews
Authors: John K. Grande | Artists: Berenice Abbott
November 27, 2017 [originally published in CV93 in Winter 2013] — Toronto, being such an architectural and photographic city, seems the perfect venue for a Berenice Abbott show. In collaboration with the Jeu de Paume in Paris, Toronto’s Ryerson Image Centre mounted a fine, comprehensive survey exhibition of Abbott’s life in photography. Early on, Abbott got to know Marcel Duchamp and Man Ray in Greenwich Village, New York, before heading for Paris to become Man Ray’s apprentice and assistant…
Ciel variable 93 – FORENSICS | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Serge Allaire | Artists: Luc Delahaye, Simon Norfolk
November 29, 2017 [originally published in French in CV93 in Winter 2013] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.
Ciel variable 93 – FORENSICS | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Sonia Pelletier | Artists: Nicolas Baier
December 4, 2017 [originally published in French in CV93 in Winter 2013] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.
Ciel variable 93 – FORENSICS | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Pierre Rannou | Artists: Jan Švankmajer, Melanie Gilligann
December 6, 2017 [originally published in French in CV93 in Winter 2013] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.
Ciel variable 93 – FORENSICS | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Julien Champagne | Artists: Ryoji Ikeda
December 11, 2017 [originally published in French in CV93 in Winter 2013] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.
Ciel variable 93 – FORENSICS | Essays
Authors: Karen Henry | Artists: Henri Robideau
November 6, 2017 [originally published in CV93 in Winter 2013] — Who would have thought that the 1980s were such a stimulating time. There is so much emphasis in cultural memory on the 1960s and 1970s that it seemed like it was all over by the 1980s – but not so, as revealed in the two-part exhibition on photography in Vancouver c. 1983…
Ciel variable 93 – FORENSICS | Essays
Authors: Jean-François Nadeau | Artists: Beatrix von Conta, Gabor Szilasi, Guillaume D. Cyr, Jocelyne Alloucherie, Martin Beaulieu, Maryse Goudreau, Yana Ouellet
December 18, 2017 [originally published in French in CV93 in Winter 2013] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.
Ciel variable 93 – FORENSICS | Portfolios
Authors: Bénédicte Ramade | Artists: Phil Chadwick
December 20, 2017 [originally published in CV93 in Winter 2013] — Meteorology is a science of prediction. Every day, 2.5 quintillion bytes of information are analyzed in order to anticipate precipitation, predict temperatures, and so on.1 The weather report, on tv or radio, has become an indispensable barometer, and there are now countless weather “aps” available…
Ciel variable 93 – FORENSICS | Portfolios
Authors: Gaëlle Morel | Artists: Emmanuelle Léonard
December 20, 2017 [originally published in CV93 in Winter 2013] — After devoting a number of projects to the world of work, Montreal photographer and videographer Emmanuelle Léonard investigates the notions of visual traces and information in her most recent works…
Ciel variable 93 – FORENSICS | Portfolios
Authors: Vincent Lavoie | Artists: William E. Jones
January 10, 2018 [originally published in CV93 in Winter 2013] — In the summer of 1962, the Mansfield, Ohio, police department, convinced that homosexual practices created a predisposition to perpetrate serious predatory crimes, decided to put the public restroom in a large park in its town under surveillance. The site was suspected of being the scene of clandestine sexual activities…
Ciel variable 93 – FORENSICS | Portfolios
Authors: Marianne Cloutier | Artists: Paul Vanouse
January 15, 2017 [originally published in CV93 in Winter 2013] — The American artist Paul Vanouse, known for his collaboration with the collective Critical Art Ensemble, has had a practice involving diversion since the early 1990s. He appropriates techniques, tools, materials1 , and knowledge from the techno-sciences in order to better examine what is at stake in those disciplines…
Ciel variable 93 – FORENSICS | Portfolios
Authors: Alexis Lussier | Artists: Corinne May Botz
January 17, 2017 [originally published in CV93 in Winter 2013] — Ever since Alphonse Bertillon (1853–1914) first took his metric photographs, in which he tried to produce accurate maps of crime scenes, legal photography has always been, in spite of itself, a “photography of interiors.” This involved considerable technical constraints (cramped quarters with no place to pull back, poor of insufficient lighting, and so on), as Rodolphe Reiss (1875–1929) often demonstrated…
Ciel variable 93 – FORENSICS | Portfolios
Authors: Susan Schuppli | Artists: Errol Morris
January 22, 2017 [originally published in CV93 in Winter 2013] — Standard Operating Procedure, directed by Errol Morris, offers a concise example of a methodological shift – what we (in the European Research Council project that I am affiliated with) have elsewhere called a forensic turn – within the investigation of human rights violations and war crimes…
Ciel variable 93 – FORENSICS | Portfolios
Authors: Vincent Lavoie | Artists: Taryn Simon
January 24, 2017 [originally published in CV93 in Winter 2013] — On 6 June 1985, the international press was invited to the small Embu das Artes cemetery in Brazil to witness an extraordinary discovery. A team of police officers and medico-legal experts had just exhumed the presumed remains of Josef Mengele, the Nazi doctor at Auschwitz. A series of photographs taken on this occasion by reporter Robert Nickelsberg show the press’s infatuation with this event…
Ciel variable 93 – FORENSICS | Portfolios
Authors: Vincent Lavoie
Since the 1990s, there has been a rise to pre-eminence of forensic imaginaries. This phenomenon can be observed in contemporary literature, as in novels by Kathy Reichs (Déjà Dead, 1997), herself a forensic anthropologist by profession, and in television series (Crime Scene Investigation, 2000; Forensic Files, 2000; Bones, 2005) that promulgate a belief in the […]
Ciel variable 93 – FORENSICS | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon
This issue of Ciel variable includes a fifty-page special section on the appropriation by visual artists of questions related to forensic evidence. Organized by guest editor Vincent Lavoie, professor of art history and photography at UQAM, this issue continues in the spirit of some of our previous issues focusing on specific aspects of photographic studies […]
[Winter 2013] This issue of Ciel variable includes a fifty-page special section on the appropriation by visual artists of questions related to forensic evidence. Organized by guest editor Vincent Lavoie, professor of art history and photography at UQAM, this issue continues in the spirit of some of our previous issues focusing on specific aspects of […]
Ciel variable 92 – TRUE NORTH | Interviews
Authors: Jacques Doyon, Stephen Bulger
September 5, 2017 [originally published in CV92 in Fall 2012] — Stephen Bulger studied at Ryerson University in Toronto. He was the founding director of the Ryerson Gallery, where he managed over thirty exhibitions. in 1994, he opened the Stephen Bulger gallery to exhibit and sell contemporary and historical photographs, with a special emphasis on the documentary tradition and Canadian historical photographs.
Ciel variable 92 – TRUE NORTH | Book Reviews
Authors: Sonia Pelletier
[Fall 2012] Des essais Mutations, perspectives sur la photographie / Perspectives on Photography (Paris Photo, Steidl, France / Allemagne, sous la direction de / edited by Chantal Pontbriand, 2012, 414 p., fr. / angl.) a été publié à l’occasion de la foire Paris Photo et constitue un ouvrage de premier plan sur l’évolution et l’état […]
Ciel variable 92 – TRUE NORTH | Book Reviews
Authors: Peter White
September 7, 2017 [originally published in CV92 in Fall 2012] — On the one hand, there are the snaps by career civil servant Warren Langford who, in 1963, unaccountably found himself part of domestic and overseas military-civilian familiarization tours of Cold War hot spots.1 On the other hand, there are his daughter Martha, an authority in the scholarly study of vernacular photography, and son John, a political scientist whose expertise includes public sector ethics…
Ciel variable 92 – TRUE NORTH | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Dan Antonat | Artists: Linda-Marlena Bucholtz Ross
September 11, 2017 [originally published in French in CV92 in Fall 2012] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.
Ciel variable 92 – TRUE NORTH | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Sylvain Campeau | Artists: Martin Désilets
September 13, 2017 [originally published in French in CV92 in Fall 2012] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.
Ciel variable 92 – TRUE NORTH | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Catherine Lebel Ouellet | Artists: Emmanuel Galland, Jon Rafman
September 18, 2017 [originally published in French in CV92 in Fall 2012] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.
Ciel variable 92 – TRUE NORTH | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Mona Hakim | Artists: Pierre Blache
September 21, 2017 [originally published in French in CV92 in Fall 2012] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.
Ciel variable 92 – TRUE NORTH | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Zoë Tousignant | Artists: Donigan Cumming, Matthieu Brouillard
September 26, 2017 [originally published in CV92 in Fall 2012] — Curated by Erin Silver, this bilingually (and cleverly) titled exhibition juxtaposed works by Matthieu Brouillard and Donigan Cumming, two artists who, although they are separated by a generation and consequently possess different measures of experience, are both well known to the Montreal art scene. The act of juxtaposition is, in itself, a strong curatorial statement…
Ciel variable 92 – TRUE NORTH | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Hélène Brunet Neumann | Artists: Patrice Duhamel
September 28, 2017 [originally published in French in CV92 in Fall 2012] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.
Ciel variable 92 – TRUE NORTH | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Caroline Bem | Artists: Jeremy Borsos
October 2, 2017 [originally published in French in CV92 in Fall 2012] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.
Ciel variable 92 – TRUE NORTH | Exhibition reviews
Authors: James D. Campbell | Artists: Marisa Portolese
October 4, 2017 [originally published in CV92 in Fall 2012] — UMA, Montreal’s estimable Maison de l’image et de la photographie, has taken a valuable and highly laudatory initiative in seeking out vacant commercial spaces throughout Montreal and installing photographic works in their windows. What was once a forlorn blank slate of the inner city becomes a vibrant forum for the photographic image. The works remain on view until the spaces are rented or sold…
Ciel variable 92 – TRUE NORTH | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Louis Cummins | Artists: Christian Marclay
October 2, 2017 [originally published in French in CV92 in Fall 2012] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.
Ciel variable 92 – TRUE NORTH | Essays
Authors: Alexis Desgagnés | Artists: Paul Graham
October 12, 2017 [originally published in French in CV92 in Fall 2012] — This spring, the Pace Gallery in New York, a temple to photography since the early 1980s, had a show of recent works by English photographer Paul Graham in one of its locations in the Chelsea neighbourhood. The Present, the works which have also been published in a book by the English publisher MACK, is the third part of a photographic trilogy begun at the turn of the century with American Night (1998–2002), followed by the ambitious series A Shimmer of Possibility (2004–06)…
Ciel variable 92 – TRUE NORTH | Essays
Authors: Mirna Boyadjian | Artists: Taryn Simon
October 16, 2017 [originally published in French in CV92 in Fall 2012] — Howard Becker wrote an essay called “Do Photographs Tell the Truth?” in 1986, and the question still seems pertinent. Although today we admit that the photographic image constitutes a (re)construction of the world and not a reproduction of reality, a certain legalistic conception of photographs tends to be maintained…
Ciel variable 92 – TRUE NORTH | Essays
Authors: Charles Guilbert | Artists: José Toirac, Omer Fast, Philippe Parreno, Taryn Simon
October 18, 2017 [originally published in French in CV92 in Fall 2012] — Sometimes, thanks to a curator’s insight, a group exhibition be comes a work of art in itself. This is the case for “Chronicles of a Disappearance,” in which John Zeppetelli not only presents five artworks of an extraordinary density but, in bringing them together, weaves networks of meaning that greatly strengthen each artwork.
Ciel variable 92 – TRUE NORTH | Portfolios
Authors: Isa Tousignant | Artists: Eamon Mac Mahon
October 23, 2017 [originally published in French in CV92 in Fall 2012] — My first encounter with Canadian photographer and artist Eamon Mac Mahon was when I worked as an editor for a travel magazine, at which he was the stuff of local legend. He had shot a story about the Bahamas for which he’d risked life and limb: on a tiny, rickety plane with, lore dictates, more holes than a fisherman’s net, he hung out of the main cavity – tied in place with only a rope – to capture aerial shots of the turquoise swirling waters. The story won awards.
Ciel variable 92 – TRUE NORTH | Portfolios
Authors: Geneviève Chevalier | Artists: Andreas Rutkauskas
October 25, 2017 [originally published in French in CV92 in Fall 2012] — I found out about the Virtually There project in 2009 during a brief visit to the Gushul Studio, which offers a residency program run by the University of Lethbridge in Alberta. At the time, Andreas Rutkauskas was staying there and preparing to make another of his outings in the mountains. The Gushul Studio is located in the small town of Blairmore, in the Crowsnest Pass area of the Rocky Mountains in the southwest part of Alberta…
Ciel variable 92 – TRUE NORTH | Portfolios
Authors: Pierre Dessureault | Artists: Thomas Kneubühler
October 30, 2017 [originally published in French in CV92 in Fall 2012] — Thomas Kneubühler’s Under Currents takes us through the hydroelectric installations at James Bay and the complex network of exchanges between North and South that their construction has established. What is initially striking in this coherent whole is the rigorous organization of various elements in a series of groupings to form a well-marked path that is constructed bit by bit, in successive layers, with each of the carefully defined and delimited components opening new perspectives and adding a stratum of meaning to the plural discourse that has been set in motion.
Ciel variable 92 – TRUE NORTH | Portfolios
Artists: Andreas Rutkauskas, Eamon Mac Mahon, Thomas Kneubühler
Three experiences of the north, real or perceived, that bring us face to face with the realities of a little-known region undergoing accelerated transformation. The north is at once home to a sparse population, an ecosystem vital to the entire continent, and a vast resource base that is in the sights of developers as ever […]
Ciel variable 92 – TRUE NORTH | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon | Artists: Andreas Rutkauskas, Eamon Mac Mahon, Thomas Kneubühler
Today, the North is making economic headlines, as it has become a new Eldorado for societies stalked by the dream of continual growth. This territory – homeland to First Nations, an ecosystem vital to the entire continent, and a vast pool of natural resources – is nevertheless mostly unknown to the general public. National mythology […]
[Fall 2012] Today, the North is making economic headlines, as it has become a new Eldorado for societies stalked by the dream of continual growth. This territory – homeland to First Nations, an ecosystem vital to the entire continent, and a vast pool of natural resources – is nevertheless mostly unknown to the general public. […]
Ciel variable 91 – OUR WORLD | Interviews
Authors: Jacques Doyon, Sébastien Hudon | Artists: Albert Dumouchel, Jean-Onésime Legault, Jean-Paul Mousseau, Sydney Jack Hayward
June 12, 2017 [originally published in CV91 in Spring 2012] — Now the artistic director of La Bande Vidéo, Sébastien Hudon has been, in turn, a bookseller, an author, a critic, and an independent curator. He was nominated for the young curator of the year award at the first agac gala following his presentation of two successive exhibitions mounted in 2010 and 2011 at Maison Hamel-Bruneau, in Quebec City: “Concerto en bleu majeur,” on the links between the visual arts and music, and …
Ciel variable 91 – OUR WORLD | Book Reviews
Authors: Sonia Pelletier
[Spring/summer 2012] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. New and Worthy Gwenaël Bélanger. Casser l’image (Expression, Centre d’exposition, Musée régional de Rimouski, 2011, n. p., fr. / angl.) Richard-Max Tremblay, Portrait (les éditions du passage, 2011, Montréal, 192 p., […]
Ciel variable 91 – OUR WORLD | Book Reviews
Authors: Erika Wicky
June 14, 2017 [originally published in French in CV91 in Spring 2012] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.
Ciel variable 91 – OUR WORLD | Book Reviews
Authors: Cheryl Simon
June 19, 2017 [originally published in CV91 in Spring 2012] — This Is Not a History of Canadian Photography. Less a history of Canadian photography, more a Canadian history told through photography, The Cultural Work of Photography in Canada considers how photographic representation is deployed to shape identity. Co-edited by Carleton University professor Carol Payne and Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography curator Andrea Kunard, the book represents the most extensive contribution to scholarship on Canadian photography in more than twenty years and may be one of the most important.
Ciel variable 91 – OUR WORLD | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Sylvain Campeau | Artists: Lynne Marsh
June 21, 2017 [originally published in French in CV91 in Spring 2012] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.
Ciel variable 91 – OUR WORLD | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Eloi Desjardins | Artists: Adad Hannah
June 27, 2017 [originally published in French in CV91 in Spring 2012] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.
Ciel variable 91 – OUR WORLD | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Isa Tousignant | Artists: Normand Rajotte
June 28, 2017 [originally published in CV91 in Spring 2012] — Every summer until we were teenagers, my sister and I spent three entire months running like wild things through the dense forest of the Laurentians. With our two neighbour friends and a borrowed husky dog, we explored every nook, cranny, brook, and blueberry bush of a stretch of about two kilometres around our cottage all day, every day. They were some of my favourite times, times of excitement, serenity, and free-spiritedness that I’ve attempted to re-create since – with only a modicum of success.
Ciel variable 91 – OUR WORLD | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Louis Cummins | Artists: Bernardino Femminielli, Philippe Hamelin
July 4, 2017 [originally published in French in CV91 in Spring 2012] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.
Ciel variable 91 – OUR WORLD | Exhibition reviews
Authors: John K. Grande
July 6, 2017 [originally published in CV91 in Spring 2012] — The landscape tradition in North American photography extends back into the colonial era. In “Songs of the Future,” photography is an instrument that documents the unfolding of an industrial heritage. Some of the flavour of this show is akin to Gordon Lightfoot’s song Canadian Railway Trilogy, but, sadly, no images of Chinese or Irish workers or of Sir William van Horne figure in it.
Ciel variable 91 – OUR WORLD | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Alexis Desgagnés | Artists: Edward Steichen
July 31, 2017 [originally published in CV91 in Spring 2012] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.
Ciel variable 91 – OUR WORLD | Exhibition reviews
Authors: James D. Campbell | Artists: Scott Chandler
August 2, 2017 [originally published in CV91 in Spring 2012] — Scott Chandler’s recent work opens a window on a place and a time unknown to us. With an “under-the-radar” documentary ethic and his cumbersome camera equipment, he travelled to the Brazilian Amazon to photograph eloquent ruins hidden for generations from the outside world.
Ciel variable 91 – OUR WORLD | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Dominique Fontaine
August 7, 2017 [originally published in CV91 in Spring 2012] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.
Ciel variable 91 – OUR WORLD | Essays
Authors: Robert Evans | Artists: David Askevold
August 9, 2017 [originally published in CV91 in Spring 2012] — David Askevold’s work is variously labelled as post-minimal, conceptual, narrative, story art, and post-movement, although none of these is adequate. Westerns, country-and-western music, poltergeists, ghosts, spirits, games, rules, narratives, dreams, history, geography, scientific imaging, and anthropology all inform his work. The list of materials and approaches with which he worked is similarly eclectic…
Ciel variable 91 – OUR WORLD | Essays
Authors: Erika Nimis
August 14, 2017 [originally published in CV91 in Spring 2012] — A number of events (exhibitions, publications, and awards) have recently highlighted the growing success of South African photography on the international contemporary scene. Since the abolition of apartheid, and then the election of Nelson Mandela as president of the country in 1994, South Africa has become the spearhead of contemporary African photography, reinforced by a long and rich history that begins with the invention of photography itself, imported to Cape Town in the 1840s.1…
Ciel variable 91 – OUR WORLD | Essays
Authors: Pierre Rannou | Artists: Nadia Seboussi
August 16, 2017 [originally published in CV91 in Spring 2012] — When we enter the exhibition space at the UQAM gallery, what we see first are two television screens with headphone sets, and then we see two more screens on the wall to the right. As we continue to look around, we note the large-format photocopies of newspaper front pages on two of the four walls and, standing alone on the left side of the exhibition space, a pedestal on which a book sits…
Ciel variable 91 – OUR WORLD | Portfolios
Authors: Sonia Pelletier | Artists: Jacky Georges Lafargue, Louis Couturier
August 21, 2017 [originally published in CV91 in Spring 2012] — Jacky Georges Lafargue and Louis Couturier’s project Resolute Bay – Voyage du jour dans la nuit finds a way to take viewers on a sort of voyage to the far reaches of our country and an encounter with people who live in a remote Inuit village with only about two hundred inhabitants…
Ciel variable 91 – OUR WORLD | Portfolios
Authors: Bruno Chalifour | Artists: Tendance Floue
August 23, 2017 [originally published in CV91 in Spring 2012] — Tendance Floue is a collective of French photographers open to the world and the power of expression who reject labels and preconceptions. They are fascinated by the aesthetic possibilities that documentary photography, which they see as subjective, may offer them – whence, no doubt, the name of their group: “Tendance” (tendency), which tends toward without ever reaching the goal, and “Floue” (vague or blurred), resolutely evading precise definitions. The result?…
Ciel variable 91 – OUR WORLD | Portfolios
Authors: Sylvain Campeau | Artists: Edward Burtynsky
August 28, 2017 [originally published in CV91 in Spring 2012] — The images are supreme. Of rather respectable dimensions – when they are not downright immense – and brightly coloured, they please us, dazzle us, force us to admire them. They show landscapes, openings into our immediate environment. But this environment does not have the bucolic accents of yore, for it is increasingly occupied by signs of exploitation of natural resources. Its wild – truly wild – territories are rarer and rarer…
Ciel variable 91 – OUR WORLD
Artists: Edward Burtynsky, Jacky Georges Lafargue, Louis Couturier, Nadia Seboussi, Tendance Floue
From Alberta to Azerbaijan, from Resolute Bay to Mumbai, and from Oran to Johannesburg,this issue reveals images of an industrious, prosperous world that includes numerous dysfunctions and aberrations. With aesthetic strategies combining the documentary and the sublime, a multitude of perspectives, narrations, and installations, the image sometimes retreats to the background. EDWARD BURTYNSKY Oil A […]
Ciel variable 91 – OUR WORLD | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon | Artists: Edward Burtynsky, Jacky Georges Lafargue, Louis Couturier
From Alberta to Azerbaijan, from Resolute Bay to Mumbai, via Oran, Johannesburg, Chittagong, Shanghai, and Tucson, this issue presents images of an industrious, prosperous world that has its (un)fair share of dysfunctions and aberrations. In all of these images, the documentary component, embodied within very different aesthetic strategies, attests to and interprets various facets of […]
[Spring-Summer 2012] From Alberta to Azerbaijan, from resolute Bay to mumbai, and from Oran to Johannesburg, this issue reveals images of an industrious, prosperous world that includes numerous dysfunctions and aberrations. with aesthetic strategies combining the documentary and the sublime, a multitude of perspectives, narrations, and installations, the image sometimes retreats to the background. […]
Ciel variable 90 – COLLABORATIONS | Interviews
Authors: Jacques Doyon
April 3, 2017 [originally published in French in CV90 in Winter 2012] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.
Ciel variable 90 – COLLABORATIONS | Essays
Authors: Michel Poivert
April 3, 2017 [originally published in CV90 in Winter 2012] — We present an analysis of the context and strategic positionings that prevailed at the foundation of bal, a French photography institution with its roots in the field of independent press agencies. Although such a reality does not have its equivalent here, Michel Poivert’s viewpoints on the emergence of institutions, the recognition of documentary photography, and the issues in visual media education provide an interesting perspective on the initiatives taken by, and shortcomings of our institutions with regard to photographic issues.
Ciel variable 90 – COLLABORATIONS | Book Reviews
Authors: Sonia Pelletier
[Winter 2012] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. New and Worthy The Cultural Work of Photography in Canada (edited by Carole Payne, Andrea Kunard, McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2011, 270 p., angl.) Sylvain Campeau (Chantiers de l’image, Éditions Nota […]
Ciel variable 90 – COLLABORATIONS | Book Reviews
Authors: Maxime Coulombe
April 10, 2017 [originally published in French in CV90 in Winter 2012] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.
Ciel variable 90 – COLLABORATIONS | Book Reviews
Authors: Anne Bénichou, Felicity Tayler
April 12, 2017 [originally published in CV90 in Winter 2012] — The title of this volume, which translates as “Open the document,” is an imperative: it urges you to unfold the cover, printed in solid gold ink, of a perfect-bound paperback. This materiality suggests that the contents are both precious and brilliant, and that there is urgency in its message…
Ciel variable 90 – COLLABORATIONS | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Johanna Mizgala | Artists: Boris Mikhailov
April 18, 2017 [originally published in CV90 in Winter 2012] — During the Soviet era, it was unlawful to photograph anything that contradicted the reigning political ideology. As images were seen to be an extremely forceful argument to support the cause, anything that might show signs of rust on the well-oiled machine would not be tolerated. The negation of an outlet for visual evidence to the contrary of the accepted narrative attests to the very power of the documentary photograph, for it bears silence witness when it is too dangerous to speak the truth.
Ciel variable 90 – COLLABORATIONS | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Sandra Fillion | Artists: Bertrand Carrière
April 19, 2017 [originally published in French in CV90 in Winter 2012] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.
Ciel variable 90 – COLLABORATIONS | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Jen Hutton | Artists: Guy Tillim
April 24, 2017 [originally published in CV90 in Winter 2012] — Guy Tillim’s sizable exhibition (initially organized by the Museum of Contemporary Photo at Columbia College in Chicago) at the Design Exchange was a provocative inclusion in 2011’s Scotiabank contact Festival. The title of the exhibition evokes the spirit of Patrice Lumumba, a staunch supporter of African nationalism and the first elected prime minister of the Congo after it gained independence from Belgium in June 1960…
Ciel variable 90 – COLLABORATIONS | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Barbara Garant
April 26, 2017 [originally published in French in CV90 in Winter 2012] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.
Ciel variable 90 – COLLABORATIONS | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Zoë Tousignant | Artists: André Cornellier
May 1, 2017 [originally published in CV90 in Winter 2012] — Two photographic panoramas evocative of nineteenth-century popular entertainment were on view at the McCord Museum of Canadian History. The first was a panoramic vista made by the Wm. Notman & Son studio in 1896. The larger of the two, titled The Great Mural, was created by photographer André Cornellier in 1996, exactly a century later. Both show a 360-degree bird’s-eye (or God’s-eye) view of Montreal, as seen from the southwest…
Ciel variable 90 – COLLABORATIONS | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Nicolas Mavrikakis | Artists: Emmanuelle Léonard
May 3, 2017 [originally published in French in CV90 in Winter 2012] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.
Ciel variable 90 – COLLABORATIONS | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Sholem Krishtalka | Artists: Suzy Lake
May 8, 2017 [originally published in CV90 in Winter 2012] — In general, the art world is not kind to older women artists. Nan Goldin recently gave an interview in which she was brutally frank on the subject. She remarked that three-quarters of the art world wants her dead; her work has changed, but the market would rather have the Nan of yore: documents of seedy underbellies and demi-mondes. Now that she has the life perspective of a woman in her sixties, her hard-won ease does not square with the woman the art world wants her to be. Suzy Lake has made this harsh truth the core of her work. But then again, this is not a recent development…
Ciel variable 90 – COLLABORATIONS | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Jean Lauzon
May 10, 2017 [originally published in French in CV90 in Winter 2012] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.
Ciel variable 90 – COLLABORATIONS | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Stephen Horne
May 15, 2017 [originally published in CV90 in Winter 2012] — The fourty-second edition of Les Rencontres d’Arles adopted the challenge of exploring the image economy, as well as photography’s relationship with the World Wide Web and with social networks, within the ambit of forty-seven diverse exhibitions. “From Here On,” the centrepiece exhibition at the Rencontres, presented photography in the context of the Web, the “digital revolution,” and how they circulate images.
Ciel variable 90 – COLLABORATIONS | Essays
Authors: René Viau
May 17, 2017 [originally published in CV90 in Winter 2012] — Bringing together twenty-six artists under the title Lucidity. Inward Views, the twelfth edition of Le Mois de la photo à Montréal made the theme that served as its title, if not a template for comprehension, the pivot of its articulations. Through the works in this dense, enriching event, a strongly subjective vision was proposed to viewers. For the artists, “interrogating the world goes hand in hand with interrogating oneself (and vice versa),” according to event curator Anne-Marie Ninacs.1
Ciel variable 90 – COLLABORATIONS | Essays
Authors: Alice Ming Wai Jim
May 22, 2017 [originally published in CV90 in Winter 2012] — “Navinland needs YOU,” according to the s.w.a.g. (souvenirs, wearables, and gifts) cum recruitment material of Thai artist of Indian descent Navin Rawanchaikul’s latest staging of his fledgling non-nation. Set up in a bar and restaurant at the entrance to the Giardini, where the permanent national pavilions of the Venice Biennale have been since 1885, Paradiso di Navin: A Mission to Establish Navinland is a parody as astute as it is amusing of the year’s theme of ILLUMInations.
Ciel variable 90 – COLLABORATIONS | Essays
Authors: Mona Hakim | Artists: Serge Emmanuel Jongué
May 24, 2017 [originally published in CV90 in Winter 2012] — The name Serge Emmanuel Jongué (who died in 2006) was not unknown in the photographic community. In his important essay titled “The New Photographic Order,” published in 1990,1 Jongué cast a lucid eye on the issues in Quebec documentary photography in the 1970s. His reinterpretation of the official discourse attached to this photographic school has become a classic for those interested in the history and comprehension of Quebec photographic practices.
Ciel variable 90 – COLLABORATIONS | Portfolios
Authors: Sylvain Campeau | Artists: Miki Gingras, Patrick Dionne
May 29, 2017 [originally published in CV90 in Winter 2012] — For a number of years, Patrick Dionne and Miki Gingras have been working on large-scale photographic projects that encourage artistic engagement in society. In 2002, to better fulfil this mission, they founded Diasol, a charitable organization the objective of which is to use art photography as a means of intervention with marginalized people and young people and adults with difficulties with school or family, in psychological distress, or in the process of social reintegration.
Ciel variable 90 – COLLABORATIONS | Portfolios
Authors: Alexandra Martin
May 31, 2017 [originally published in CV90 in Winter 2012] — In downtown San Francisco, at the corner of Mission and Third streets, is a huge picture window before which passersby can stop to look at a photo-mosaic several metres high inspired by the famous portrait Girl from Tamale (1973) by Chester Higgins Jr., which is also one of the “tiles” in the mosaic.
Ciel variable 90 – COLLABORATIONS | Portfolios
Authors: John K. Grande | Artists: JR
June 5, 2017 [originally published in CV90 in Winter 2012] — JR’s photography faces real life. The human faces that engage us in the real environments of the First and Third worlds are an exercise in self-identification within a larger matrix that is a seemingly invisible population of everyday people. Largely unrecognized, these people are off the map when it comes to social, political, or economic rights.
Ciel variable 90 – COLLABORATIONS | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon | Artists: JR, Miki Gingras, Patrick Dionne
Bringing to the walls and façades of cities the oversized faces of their inhabitants, reappropriating the urban space to advertise a presence and affirm an identity – these are the concerns that lie at the heart of the projects that we present in this issue. As a collaborative tool, photography becomes the instrument of a […]
Ciel variable 90 – COLLABORATIONS | Portfolios
Artists: JR, Miki Gingras, MoAD, Patrick Dionne
See the oversized faces of a city’s inhabitants emerging on its walls and façades. These people came together to find ways to reappropriate the urban space, and to advertise their presence and identity. Here, photography is a tool for affirmative collaboration. JR The Wrinkles of the City Presentation of Wrinkles of the City, produced for […]
[Winter 2012] See the oversized faces of a city’s inhabitants emerging on its walls and façades. These people came together to find ways to reappropriate the urban space, and to advertise their presence and identity. Here, photography is a tool for affirmative collaboration. ÉDITORIAL PORTFOLIOS FOCUS EXPOSITIONS LECTURES PAROLES Purchase this issue
Ciel variable 89 - PLACES | Interviews
Authors: Jacques Doyon, Marie-Josée Jean
January 24, 2017 [originally published in CV89 in Fall 2011] — Marie-Josée Jean became director of VOX, centre de l’image contemporaine in 2002, after organizing the sixth and seventh presentations of Mois de la Photo à Montréal. For the last ten years, her research has focused on the theory and practice of image-based and conceptual art. For VOX, she has organized exhibitions by John Baldessari, Bill Vazan, Marcel Duchamp, Maria Eichorn, …
Ciel variable 89 - PLACES | Book Reviews
Authors: Anne-Marie St-Jean Aubre
[Fall 2011] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. Artists’ Magazines: An Alternative Space for Art (Cambridge, MIT Press, 2011, 376 p., angl.) The Dead (Toronto, The Magenta Foundation, 2010, n.p., angl.) Angela Grauerholz. The Inexhaustible image… épuiser l’image (Ottawa, […]
Ciel variable 89 - PLACES | Book Reviews
Authors: Erika Wicky, Vincent Lavoie
January 26, 2017 [originally published in CV89 in 2011] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.
Ciel variable 89 - PLACES | Book Reviews
Authors: Christian Roy | Artists: Charles Gagnon
January 31, 2017 [originally published in French in CV89 in 2011] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.
Ciel variable 89 - PLACES | Exhibition reviews
Authors: John K. Grande | Artists: Wang Qingsong
February 2, 2017 [originally published in CV89 in Fall 2011] — Wang Qingsong’s photo scenarios focus on the ambiguities of China’s changing cultural identity and internal clash of ideologies. Pick Up the Pen, Fight to the End (1997) mimics a late Cultural Revolution poster, Take Up the Struggle of Polemics and Struggle to the End (1975), also on view. We see a girl wearing a Young Pioneers red scarf; Mao’s Little Red Book is on the table.
Ciel variable 89 - PLACES | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Sheena Ellison | Artists: Wanda Koop
February 7, 2017 [originally published in CV89 in Fall 2011] — “Wanda Koop: On the Edge of Experience” is a major attraction of the Prairie Scene festival, the fifth presentation of this biannual event organized by the National Arts Centre in Ottawa to showcase Canadian regional art scenes. Koop’s show, a mid-career retrospective of sorts, consists of four chronologically arranged sections and offers a sampling from eight of the artist’s many series.
Ciel variable 89 - PLACES | Exhibition reviews
Authors: James D. Campbell | Artists: Chih-Chien Wang
February 9, 2017 [originally published in CV89 in Fall 2011] — In Short Sentences, an aptly titled show of recent photographic and video work, Chih-Chien Wang offers a moving photographic journey that is also a poetic reverie on words and things, life and death. The show is fittingly bracketed by an image of the artist’s son asleep, and another of his son being breastfed by his partner, Yushan. In the former, Shaore Lies on Futon, a photograph of his son lying prone on a futon in deep sleep, Wang evokes the fragility of young life.
Ciel variable 89 - PLACES | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Virginie Doré Lemonde | Artists: Fiona Tan
February 14, 2017 [originally published in French in CV89 in Fall 2011] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.
Ciel variable 89 - PLACES | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Elizabeth Kalbfleisch | Artists: Greg Staats
February 16, 2017 [originally published in CV89 in Fall 2011] — Grief and loss are guiding principles in Greg Staats’s exhibition “Condolence,” but so, too, are more complex notions of alliance and reconciliation. The exhibition, co-presented by Oboro and Articule galleries and split between these two sites, offers Montrealers rare access to the work of an artist whose works are not often seen in this city.
Ciel variable 89 - PLACES | Exhibition reviews
Authors: John K. Grande | Artists: Adam Fuss, Susan Derges
February 21, 2017 [originally published in CV89 in Fall 2011] — “Shadow Catchers” takes off from the tradition of camera-less photography initiated by William Henry Fox-Talbot, whose photogenic drawings, first displayed to the public in 1839, preceded photography with a camera – a “little bit of magic realized,” as he put it. And we sense his influence on photographers who followed, such as Christian Schad, Lucia Moholy, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, and Man Ray, whose photogenic drawings…
Ciel variable 89 - PLACES | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Anja Bock | Artists: Pascal Grandmaison
February 23, 2017 [originally published in CV89 in Fall 2011] — Blue-tinged icebergs? Handmade plaster sculptures? The sleek, cool signature of Pascal Grandmaison is hard to discern when we first enter his recent exhibition at Galerie René Blouin. His new works hold several surprises: while they continue his investigation of the mediated photographic act, the figure-ground relationship, and the representation of the invisible, the three works included here are rich in metaphor, melancholy, and artistic modesty.