The Great War: The Persuasive Power of Photography – Johanna Mizgala

Ciel variable 99 - HABITAT | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Johanna Mizgala

February 13, 2019 [originally published in CV99 in Winter 2015] — The Great War: The Persuasive Power of Photography contains over four hundred images, ranging from private portraits to almost-life-size enlargements of battlefields and scenes from the front. The exhibition addresses the multiple means by which photographs circulated during the war years, while at the same time underscoring the profound sense of loss and devastation…

Félix Dufour-Laperrière, Transatlantique – Charles Guilbert

Ciel variable 99 - HABITAT | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Charles Guilbert | Artists: Félix Dufour-Laperrière

February 18, 2019 [originally published in CV99 in Winter 2015] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.

David Goldblatt, Structures of Dominion and Democracy – Stephen Horne

Ciel variable 99 - HABITAT | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Stephen Horne | Artists: David Goldblatt

February 20, 2019 [originally published in CV99 in Winter 2015] — David Goldblatt has been photographing in South Africa for many decades. The acuity with which he has recorded the depths of violence and its specific character both during and after the era of apartheid rests on his observation of violence naturalized…

Ryoji Ikeda, superposition – Louis Cummins

Ciel variable 99 - HABITAT | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Louis Cummins | Artists: Ryoji Ikeda

February 25, 2019 [originally published in CV99 in Winter 2015] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.

Kelly Lycan, Underglow – Karen Henry

Ciel variable 99 - HABITAT | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Karen Henry | Artists: Kelly Lycan

February 27, 2019 [originally published in CV99 in Winter 2015] — The title of Kelly Lycan’s show, Underglow, incorporates her interest in consumer culture, photography, high art, and cultures of display. Lycan uses the connotations of luminous detailing in car culture, cosmetic techniques that add shimmering radiance, and, in general, the use of light to emphasize form to animate the role of light in photography…

PHotoEspaña 2014: Shining Light on Spanish Photography – Jill Glessing

Ciel variable 99 - HABITAT | Essays
Authors: Jill Glessing | Artists: Paco Gómez Martínez

March 4, 2019 [originally published in CV99 in Winter 2015] — “Mother and teacher mine, my sad and spacious Spain”: this is how the poet, Blas de Otero described his country’s vast geography and serial suffering under the double yoke of monarchy and religion, and then under fascism…

Forgotten Photography : The Case of Béla F. Egyedi – Zoë Tousignant

Ciel variable 99 - HABITAT | Essays
Authors: Zoë Tousignant | Artists: Béla Egyedi

March 6, 2019 [originally published in CV99 in Winter 2015] — Béla Ferenc Egyedi was born in 1913 in Esztergom, Hungary. He immigrated to Canada in 1951 and lived for many years in Montreal’s Milton-Park neighbourhood, at various addresses on Lorne Avenue and Durocher Street, near Milton Street. He was simultaneously a photographer, a printmaker, a poet, and a ceramicist…

Valérie Jouve, Five women from the country of the moon – Fabien Pinaroli

Ciel variable 99 - HABITAT | Essays
Authors: Fabien Pinaroli | Artists: Valérie Jouve

March 11, 2019 [originally published in CV99 in Winter 2015] — For more than twenty years, in her encounters and the resulting portraits, Valérie Jouve has been navigating among reference points composed of historical markers such as architecture in peripheral zones, or the habituses of contemporary human beings…

Normand Rajotte, Le chantier – Caroline Loncol Daigneault, In the Eye of the Beaver

Ciel variable 99 - HABITAT | Portfolios
Authors: Caroline Loncol Daignault | Artists: Normand Rajotte

March 13, 2019 [originally published in CV99 in Winter 2015] — Le chantier: the first image. Through marks and lines – green, taupe, orange – a wet woodlands glistens. In the foreground, three black tree trunks. The one in the centre is cut open at the base, showing freshly gnawed yellow flesh. It partially hides a pile of branches arranged in an outwardly spreading form – the key, the sun of the image…

Allison Tweedie, Cutting Sunsets – Gentiane La France, Domesticated Landscapes

Ciel variable 99 - HABITAT | Portfolios
Authors: Gentiane La France | Artists: Allison Tweedie

March 18, 2019 [originally published in CV99 in Winter 2015] — The series Cutting Sunsets is composed of small-format collages portraying scenes of daily life around affluent dwellings on the American west coast. A few people, here and there, quietly tend to their land, do maintenance, contemplate, walk around, and converse…

Steve Veilleux, Projections – Sébastien Hudon, An Achievable Dystopia

Ciel variable 99 - HABITAT | Portfolios
Authors: Sébastien Hudon | Artists: Steve Veilleux

March 20, 2019 [originally published in CV99 in Winter 2015] — One can easily imagine the scene, so banal that it is universal. On a moonless night, its highbeams blazing, a new car, with a new couple inside, rolls down a remote road, far from the bustle of the city. The passengers, the nuclear family of the post-atomic era, already see themselves there, deluded by the illusion of an extraordinary suburb – one of a thousand similar suburbs…

Stephen Gill, Pigeons – Iain Sinclair, Bridge Fishing

Ciel variable 99 - HABITAT | Portfolios
Authors: Iain Sinclair | Artists: Stephen Gill

March 25, 2019 [originally published in CV99 in Winter 2015] — Our expeditions usually begin at first light. This time, Stephen explained, we would be better to hold off until the worst of the rush hour had burnt itself out. I sat on the church porch and waited, admiring a procession of those bright-red sculptural interventions held long enough at the traffic lights to catch the appreciative eye, the new Stagecoach buses with the NOT IN SERVICE destination windows…

Habitat

Ciel variable 99 - HABITAT | Portfolios
Authors: Alexis Desgagnés | Artists: Allison Tweedie, Normand Rajotte, Stephen Gill, Steve Veilleux

So, here we are, humans and animals (the same thing, really), perforce engaged in the concrete and naked fact of existing. We are – the verb says it with the force of law – sunk into being like a foundation is sunk into the ground. For as long as the few hours, days, or decades […]

Environments

Ciel variable 99 - HABITAT | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon

We are pleased to present in this issue the first thematic section put together by Alexis Desgagnés in his new position as associate editor of the magazine. The section, bearing on the notion of habitat, juxtaposes recent works by photographers Normand Rajotte and Stephen Gill, each of whom stands out for a field practice adapted […]

Ciel variable 99 – HABITAT

Ciel variable 99 - HABITAT

[Winter 2015] The realm of the living includes as many habitats as ways of life. As fragments of the impossible inventory of all inhabited places, these four portfolios cross over into environments that may be real or fantasized, but are always constructed. EDITORIAL PORTFOLIOS FOCUS EXHIBITIONS READINGS VOICES Purchase this issue

MaryAnn Camilleri, The Magenta Foundation – Jill Glessing

Ciel variable 98 – ABSTRACTION | Interviews
Authors: Jill Glessing, MaryAnn Camilleri | Artists: Adam Makarenko, Alma Haser, Evgenia Arbugaeva, Simon Roberts

November 12, 2018 [originally published in CV98 in Fall 2014] — MaryAnn Camilleri is the executive director of the Magenta Foundation. After completing her BA in photographic arts at Ryerson University, Toronto­ born Camilleri moved to New York, where she worked at Magnum Photo for ten years. In 2003, she returned to Toronto and, with the goal of publishing high­-quality art books and promoting Canadian photographic artists, she started up Carte Blanche…

New and Worthy – Sonia Pelletier

Ciel variable 98 – ABSTRACTION | Book Reviews, Readings
Authors: Sonia Pelletier

[Automne 2014] You can read the bilingual article by switching over to the French version of this page : CV98 – Ouvrages à souligner. The Photobook: A History Volume III, ed. Martin Parr & Gerry Badger, New York: Phaidon Press, 2014, 304 pp. Clément Dirié et Michèle Thériault (dir.), Joana Hadjithomas + Khalil Joreige, Zurich, […]

Chantal Pontbriand, The Contemporary, the Common: Art in a Globalizing World – Michael Frederick Rattray

Ciel variable 98 – ABSTRACTION | Book Reviews, Readings
Authors: Michael Frederick Rattray

November 14, 2018 [originally published in CV98 in Fall 2014] — The book is a collection of essays on contemporary art history written by Pontbriand between 2000 and 2011 (other than the new writing undertaken to contextualize and draw together the at times disparate essays). It is a personal reflection upon and an example of an early-twenty-first-century sensibility that we experience collectively…

Ariella Azoulay, Aïm Deüelle Lüski and Horizontal Photography – Erika Wicky

Ciel variable 98 – ABSTRACTION | Book Reviews, Readings
Authors: Erika Wicky

Novembre 19, 2018 [originally published in CV98 in Fall 2014] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.

Vera Frenkel – Cheryl Simon

Ciel variable 98 – ABSTRACTION | Book Reviews, Readings
Authors: Cheryl Simon

November 21, 2018 [originally published in CV98 in Fall 2014] — Vera Frenkel, a monograph published last year by German art book publisher Hatje Cantz, offers the most comprehensive study of this Canadian multidisciplinary artist’s work to date. Remarkable for its reach, the book includes twelve essays focused on nine projects completed over a forty-year span, …

Caroline Hayeur, Adoland – Nicolas Mavrikakis

Ciel variable 98 – ABSTRACTION | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Nicolas Mavrikakis | Artists: Caroline Hayeur

Novembre 26, 2018 [originally published in CV98 in Fall 2014] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.

Bettina Hoffmann, Drain – Sylvain Campeau

Ciel variable 98 – ABSTRACTION | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Sylvain Campeau | Artists: Bettina Hoffmann

Novembre 28, 2018 [originally published in CV98 in Fall 2014] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.

Louis Couturier et Jacky Georges Lafargue, Asbestos Storm – Line Dezainde

Ciel variable 98 – ABSTRACTION | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Line Dezainde | Artists: Jacky Georges Lafargue, Louis Couturier

December 3, 2018 [originally published in CV98 in Fall 2014] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.

La photographie de la ville arabe au XIXe siècle – Mirna Boyadjian

Ciel variable 98 – ABSTRACTION | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Mirna Boyadjian | Artists: Émile Béchard

December 5, 2018 [originally published in CV98 in Fall 2014] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.

Home Sweet Home – Sonia Pelletier

Ciel variable 98 – ABSTRACTION | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Sonia Pelletier | Artists: Juan Betancurth, Nancy Davenport, Søren Lose

December 10, 2018 [originally published in CV98 in Fall 2014] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.

Manif d’art 7 – Véronique Leblanc

Ciel variable 98 – ABSTRACTION | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Véronique Leblanc | Artists: Darlene Laponse, Jean-Maxime Dufresne, Mark Boulos, Virginie Laganière

December 12, 2018 [originally published in CV98 in Fall 2014] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.

CounterIntelligence – Jill Glessing

Ciel variable 98 – ABSTRACTION | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Jill Glessing

December 17, 2018 [originally published in CV98 in Fall 2014] — The rich-text title CounterIntelligence that introduces an exhibition, writings, workshop, and film screenings considers two cultural nodes and production modes – art and military activity. The project’s formal and thematic eclecticism befits the Berlin-based Canadian curator, Charles Stankievech, whose own work traverses the fields of sound and visual art, writing, and publishing…

Of Walking. A Photography and Thirdspace Paradigm – Philippe Guillaume

Ciel variable 98 – ABSTRACTION | Essays
Authors: Philippe Guillaume | Artists: Dorothea Lange, Garry Winogrand, Jim Campbell, Paulien Oltheten, Sohei Nishino

December 18, 2018 [originally published in CV98 in Fall 2014] — Karen Irvine, curator and museum associate director at the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago, recounted that it was after seeing Sohei Nishino’s work in Korea in 2010 and reading Rebecca Solnit that she had the idea for the Of Walking exhibition. Nishino is one of eight international contemporary artists whose works were in the show…

Revisiting History in Fragments: Three Recent Projects by Stan Douglas – Ariane Noël de Tilly

Ciel variable 98 – ABSTRACTION | Essays
Authors: Ariane Noël de Tilly | Artists: Stan Douglas

January 7, 2019 [originally published in CV98 in Fall 2014] — Stan Douglas’s earlier productions include Every Building on 100 West Hastings (2001), a nocturnal panorama of a block of buildings situated in a poor Vancouver neighbourhood, and the series of four photographs Crowds & Riots (2008), depicting recon­structions of crowd scenes and riots that took place in Vancouver during the twentieth century…

Unpacking Serge Clément’s Library – Zoë Tousignant

Ciel variable 98 – ABSTRACTION | Essays
Authors: Zoë Tousignant | Artists: Serge Clément

January 9, 2019 [originally published in CV98 in Fall 2014] — I travelled to Quebec City to see Serge Clément’s exhibition Constellations on a snowy Sunday afternoon in April. I had little prior knowledge of the show, presented at VU, centre de diffusion et de production de la photographie from March 21 to April 20, 2014, save for its basic idea: to showcase Clément’s collection of photobooks…

Henri Venne, Somewhere in Between – Sylvain Campeau, Painting Indebted to Photography

Ciel variable 98 – ABSTRACTION | Portfolios
Authors: Sylvain Campeau | Artists: Henri Venne

January 14, 2019 [originally published in CV98 in Fall 2014] — Henri Venne is a painter. It is painted matter that interests him. It is in this medium that he was educated, and it is also how he defines himself. Henri Venne is also a photographer, as the works that emerge from his creative process are photographs. He is also interested in how images are imbued with visual effects, places for various reflections…

Lorna Bauer | Jon Knowles – Jacinthe Lessard-L. / Charles Guilbert, Images in the Void (and Vice Versa)

Ciel variable 98 – ABSTRACTION | Portfolios
Authors: Charles Guilbert | Artists: Jacinthe Lessard-L., Jon Knowles, Lorna Bauer

January 16, 2019 [originally published in CV98 in Fall 2014] — It is quite uncommon for the association of two exhibitions to create a dialogue that becomes an artwork in itself. Yet, this is what Dazibao did by bringing together works by Jacinthe Lessard-L. and by the duo formed of Lorna Bauer and Jon Knowles. Their respective works, although different in tonality and look, intertwine to lead viewers into a surprising reflection on darkness…

Thomas Ruff, Photograms – Jacinto Lageira, Gradations of Reality

Ciel variable 98 – ABSTRACTION | Portfolios
Authors: Jacinto Lageira | Artists: Thomas Ruff

January 21, 2019 [originally published in CV98 in Fall 2014] — Given the impossible computer-made “photograms” in Thomas Ruff’s recent series – thus in line with Moholy-Nagy’s idea that one can make photographs without a camera (he made his own photograms) – we must immediately consider either a broadening of the notion of photography or its being subsumed, pure and simple…

Abstraction

Ciel variable 98 – ABSTRACTION | Portfolios
Artists: Henri Venne, Jacinthe Lessard-L., Jon Knowles, Lorna Bauer, Thomas Ruff

These abstract works involving simple forms evoke methods of analogue photography to challenge the degree of veracity of the image. Imprint, inversion, and casting are some of the components transposed into other artistic media to re-evaluate our capacity to apprehend the real. THOMAS RUFF Photograms Thomas Ruff’s images, made with 3D digital imaging software, are […]

The Analogue and the Abstract

Ciel variable 98 – ABSTRACTION | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon | Artists: Henri Venne, Jacinthe Lessard-L., Jon Knowles, Lorna Bauer, Thomas Ruff

Each in its way, the works in this issue’s portfolio speak of photography and analogue images by inscribing them in other artistic media (digital simulation, film, video, sculpture, painting). The imprint of light is thus materialized in abstract, simplified forms that multiply the images’ referential registers while relativizing the privileged link between photography and the […]

Ciel variable 98 – ABSTRACTION

Ciel variable 98 – ABSTRACTION

  [Fall 2014] These abstract works involving simple forms evoke methods of analogue photography to challenge the degree of veracity of the image. Imprint, inversion, and casting are some of the components transposed into other artistic media to re-evaluate our capacity to apprehend the real. ÉDITORIAL PORTFOLIOS FOCUS EXPOSITIONS LECTURES PAROLES   Purchase this issue

Martha Langford, About Speaking of Photography – Jacques Doyon

Ciel variable 97 - PORTRAIT GALLERY | Interviews
Authors: Jacques Doyon, Martha Langford | Artists: Clifford Owens

September 5, 2018 [originally published in CV97 in Spring 2014] — Martha Langford is the research chair and director of the Gail and Stephen A. Jarislowsky Institute for Studies in Canadian Art and a professor of art history at Concordia University in Montreal. Her books on photography include Suspended Conversations: The Afterlife of Memory in Photographic Albums (2001); Scissors, Paper, Stone: Expressions of Memory in Contemporary Photographic Art (2007)…

New and Worthy – Sonia Pelletier

Ciel variable 97 - PORTRAIT GALLERY | Book Reviews, Readings
Authors: Sonia Pelletier

[Spring-Summer 2014] You can read the bilingual article by switching over to the French version of this page : CV97 – Ouvrages à souligner. Par Sonia Pelletier What Is a Photograph?, New York: International Center of Photography, 2013, 256 pp., Eng. Art and The Internet, London, U.K.: Black Dog Publishing, 2013, 224 pp., Eng. Chantal […]

Michael Flomen, NYX/1993*2013 – John K. Grande

Ciel variable 97 - PORTRAIT GALLERY | Exhibition reviews
Authors: John K. Grande | Artists: Michael Flomen

September 7, 2018 [originally published in CV97 in Spring 2014] — The origins of camera-less photography go back to the beginnings of photography, with William Henry Fox Talbot’s photogenic drawings, the process for which he described in 1839: “It is a little bit of magic realized: – of natural magic. You make the powers of nature work for you, and no wonder that your work is well and quickly done…”

Yan Giguère, Visites libres – Julie Gagné

Ciel variable 97 - PORTRAIT GALLERY | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Julie Gagné | Artists: Yan Giguère

September 12, 2018 [originally published in CV97 in Spring 2014] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.

Claire Beaugrand-Champagne. Émouvante vérité, Photographies de 1970 à 2013 – Pierre Dessureault

Ciel variable 97 - PORTRAIT GALLERY | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Pierre Dessureault | Artists: Claire Beaugrand-Champagne

September 14, 2018 [originally published in CV97 in Spring 2014] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.

Ghost Dance: Activism. Resistance. Art. – Ivan Tanzer

Ciel variable 97 - PORTRAIT GALLERY | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Ivan Tanzer | Artists: Alan Michelson

September 17, 2018 [originally published in CV97 in Spring 2014] — Although he did not set out to organize a comprehensive history of activism in Aboriginal art, guest curator and National Visiting Trudeau Fellow Steve Loft has mounted a significant exhibition that strengthens the living discourse surrounding Aboriginal art production…

Jocelyne Alloucherie, Dédale / Yann Pocreau, Projections – Sonia Pelletier

Ciel variable 97 - PORTRAIT GALLERY | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Sonia Pelletier | Artists: Jocelyne Alloucherie, Yann Pocreau

September 19, 2018 [originally published in CV97 in Spring 2014] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.

Raymond Depardon, Un moment si doux – Franck Michel

Ciel variable 97 - PORTRAIT GALLERY | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Franck Michel | Artists: Raymond Depardon

September 24, 2018 [originally published in CV97 in Spring 2014] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.

Laura Letinsky, Still Life Photographs 1997–2012 – Robert Evans

Ciel variable 97 - PORTRAIT GALLERY | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Robert Evans | Artists: Laura Letinsky

September 26, 2018 [originally published in CV97 in Spring 2014] — For over a decade, Winnipeg-born photographer Laura Letinsky has pursued still-life photography as a means to explore social structures and the world around us. These works are drawn from five series and range from early compositions that owe obvious debts to the traditional still-life genre to more recent images that challenge the viewer’s understanding of picture space and the nature of photographic representation…

Lorraine Gilbert, Paysages canadiens 1988-2013 – Sylvain Campeau

Ciel variable 97 - PORTRAIT GALLERY | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Sylvain Campeau | Artists: Lorraine Gilbert

October 1, 2018 [originally published in CV97 in Spring 2014] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.

Michel Lamothe, Fréquenter le paysage – Mona Hakim

Ciel variable 97 - PORTRAIT GALLERY | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Mona Hakim | Artists: Michel Lamothe

October 3, 2018 [originally published in CV97 in Spring 2014] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.

Antoni Muntadas, Entre/Between – Karen Henry

Ciel variable 97 - PORTRAIT GALLERY | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Karen Henry | Artists: Antoni Muntadas

October 10, 2018 [originally published in CV97 in Spring 2014] — Warning: Perception Requires Involvement, in bold white text on a red background, covers the wall of the Canada Line transit station in downtown Vancouver. It is both a statement about the commitment needed to understand something and a public warning about the tendency these days to limit the onslaught of information to what can be gleaned in a ten-second media clip or an advertising image…

Dominique Blain, Blancs de mémoire – Pierre Rannou

Ciel variable 97 - PORTRAIT GALLERY | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Pierre Rannou | Artists: Dominique Blain

October 12, 2018 [originally published in CV97 in Spring 2014] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.

Robert Burley, La disparition de l’obscurité / Michel Campeau, Icônes de l’obsolescence – Louis Cummins

Ciel variable 97 - PORTRAIT GALLERY | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Louis Cummins | Artists: Michel Campeau, Robert Burley

October 15, 2018 [originally published in CV97 in Spring 2014] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.

Tacita Dean, Out of Time: A Seeing that Touches – Stephen Horne

Ciel variable 97 - PORTRAIT GALLERY | Essays
Authors: Stephen Horne | Artists: Tacita Dean

October 17, 2018 [originally published in CV97 in Spring 2014] — This was Winnicott’s response to the difficult challenge of reconciling oneself to one’s own temporality, a favoured problem for artists from On Kawara to Ann Hamilton to Tacita Dean. Artists have tended to handle this challenge in one of two ways: through an art practice that cultivates a relationship with the past or, conversely, by exploring new forms of subjectivity…

The Quebec Photobook, Thoughts on a History to Be Uncovered – Alexis Desgagnés

Ciel variable 97 - PORTRAIT GALLERY | Essays
Authors: Alexis Desgagnés

October 22, 2018 [originally published in CV97 in Spring 2014] — I discovered Marcel Cognac by chance – a chance presented to those who know how to wait for it, to those who want to understand something about their culture and their country. When I came across a copy of his book Visages du Québec, published in 1964, with text by Jean-Charles Harvey…

Family of Man | New Topographics, Audacity by Proxy : The Reiteration of Exhibitions – Bénédicte Ramade

Ciel variable 97 - PORTRAIT GALLERY | Essays
Authors: Bénédicte Ramade

October 24, 2018 [originally published in CV97 in Spring 2014] — The two last decades have seen the growth of a complex phenomenon: exhibition reproductions. A reprise produced as the inclusion of a “period room” doesn’t have the same effects as a complete restaging of a famous precedent in twentieth-century art history…

Gabriel Coutu-Dumont, The Way of the Willows – Claire Moeder, A New Wrinkle in Portraiture

Ciel variable 97 - PORTRAIT GALLERY | Portfolios
Authors: Claire Moeder | Artists: Gabriel Coutu-Dumont

October 29, 2018 [originally published in CV97 in Spring 2014] — In Glasgow, the artist Gabriel Coutu-Dumont set up a minimal photography studio on Sauchiehall Street, a street frequented by the city’s night owls. For several nights, he drew these passersby away from the tumult of the street and asked them to pose in front of an analog camera for a twenty-minute session. The result was The Way of the Willows, a gallery of eighty anachronistic portraits in which the classical composition contrasts with the signs of the models’ contemporary lives…

Christian Tagliavini, 1503 | Dame di cartone – Johanna Mizgala, Mannerism, Medici, and Madmen: Christian Tagliavini’s Photographic Mise-en-scène

Ciel variable 97 - PORTRAIT GALLERY | Portfolios
Authors: Johanna Mizgala | Artists: Christian Tagliavini

November 2, 2018 [originally published in CV97 in Spring 2014] — Portraits are deceptively alluring: we are immediately attracted to admiring the faces of others. As we are drawn under their spell, the images reveal themselves to be carefully crafted manifestations that must be decoded to be fully understood…

Pierre Gonnord, Portraits – Pierre Rannou, The Intensity of the Gaze

Ciel variable 97 - PORTRAIT GALLERY | Portfolios
Authors: Pierre Rannou | Artists: Pierre Gonnord

November 5, 2018 [originally published in CV97 in Spring 2014] — Pierre Gonnord’s photographic portraits are fascinating for the experience that they offer us. The models gaze straight at the photographer’s lens, and we are taken aback: we feel like they are staring at us…

Portrait Gallery

Ciel variable 97 - PORTRAIT GALLERY | Portfolios
Artists: Christian Tagliavini, Gabriel Coutu-Dumont, Pierre Gonnord

Three approaches to the portrait sustained by pictorial references and knowledge manifested in chiaroscuro, framings and poses, texture and draping of fabrics, head positions, and, above all, the gazes. And techniques that ennoble their subjects. PIERRE GONNORD Portraits Strong presences with imposing gazes, and yet revealed with a sort of humility. Pierre Gonnord approached anonymous […]

Dignity and Distinction

Ciel variable 97 - PORTRAIT GALLERY | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon | Artists: Christian Tagliavini, Gabriel Coutu-Dumont, Pierre Gonnord

What, in fact, could the people (gypsies, miners, aristocrats, models, night owls, and others) gathered here in portraits have in common but the dignity conferred upon them by the photographers who took their picture? These artists’ approaches also share crossreferences, as well as photographic and pictorial skills displayed in chiaroscuros, framings, poses, textures and drapings […]

Ciel variable 97 – PORTRAIT GALLERY

Ciel variable 97 - PORTRAIT GALLERY

  [Spring-Summer 2014] Three approaches to the portrait sustained by pictorial references and knowledge manifested in chiaroscuro, framings and poses, texture and draping of fabrics, head positions, and, above all, the gazes. And techniques that ennoble their subjects.   EDITORIAL PORTFOLIOS FOCUS EXHIBITIONS READINGS VOICES   Purchase this issue

Luc Courchesne, Around L’invention de l’horizon – Jacques Doyon

Ciel variable 96 – PERFORMING FOR THE IMAGE | Interviews
Authors: Jacques Doyon, Luc Courchesne | Artists: Luc Courchesne

June 13, 2018 [originally published in CV96 in Winter 2014] — Luc Courchesne is a digital arts pioneer. From interactive portraits to immersive experience systems, he has created innovative and engaging works that have earned him prestigious awards such as the Grand Prize of the ICC Biennale in Tokyo in 1997 and the Award of Distinction at Ars Electronica in Linz, Austria, in 1999…

Letter to Paul Wombell, Post-scriptum and Afterthoughts About the Automated Image – Jean Gagnon

Ciel variable 96 – PERFORMING FOR THE IMAGE | Essays
Authors: Jean Gagnon | Artists: Michael Snow

June 18, 2018 [originally published in CV96 in Winter 2014] — I had the pleasure of being invited by Chuck Samuels, the director of Le Mois de la photo à Montréal, to join Paul Wombell, the curator of Le Mois de la photo 2013, at the screening of art video shorts and a presentation of Michael Snow’s La région centrale (1970) at La Cinémathèque québécoise…

New and Worthy – Sonia Pelletier

Ciel variable 96 – PERFORMING FOR THE IMAGE | Book Reviews, Readings
Authors: Sonia Pelletier

[Winter 2014] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.   Download this article (Free of Charge) Milutin Gubash, rodman Hall Art Centre / Brock University ; Carleton University Art Gallery ; Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery ; Southern Alberta Art Gallery ; Musée d’art de Joliette, […]

Visiteurs photographes au musée – Romain Guedj

Ciel variable 96 – PERFORMING FOR THE IMAGE | Book Reviews, Readings
Authors: Romain Guedj

June 20, 2018 [originally published in CV96 in Winter 2014] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.

Luis Jacob, Seeing and Believing / Tromper l’œil – Emily Falvey

Ciel variable 96 – PERFORMING FOR THE IMAGE | Book Reviews, Readings
Authors: Emily Falvey

June 26, 2018 [originally published in CV96 in Winter 2014] — A substantial overview of the work of Canadian artist Luis Jacob has long been desired. Seeing and Believing, a hefty bilingual catalogue recently published by the British company Black Dog Publishing, proposes to fill this void. Produced in conjunction with a set of three distinct yet interconnected exhibitions organized by the Darling Foundry in Montreal…

Thomas Demand, Animations – Sylvain Campeau

Ciel variable 96 – PERFORMING FOR THE IMAGE | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Sylvain Campeau | Artists: Thomas Demand

June 27, 2018 [originally published in CV96 in Winter 2014] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.

Googleheim – Heather White

Ciel variable 96 – PERFORMING FOR THE IMAGE | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Heather White | Artists: Alison Craighead, Jon Thomson, Marika Dermineur, Stéphane Degoutin

July 3, 2018 [originally published in CV96 in Winter 2014] — First in the sightline for those entering Googleheim, a group show curated by Horea Avram at Interaccess in Toronto: a wireless mouse on a plinth. It might have been a monument to audience engagement – a succinct overture to a show invested in dialogue between the museum’s interest in artefacts and the Internet’s provision of access. It wasn’t that, though; interaction was not particularly celebrated…

Nathalie Bujold, éMotifs – Sonia Pelletier

Ciel variable 96 – PERFORMING FOR THE IMAGE | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Sonia Pelletier | Artists: Nathalie Bujold

July 4, 2018 [originally published in French in CV96 in Winter 2014] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.

Richard Deschênes, De la piscine aux verts – Bernard Schütze

Ciel variable 96 – PERFORMING FOR THE IMAGE | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Bernard Schütze | Artists: Richard Deschênes

July 30, 2018 [originally published in CV96 in Winter 2014] — Richard Deschênes’s exhibition De la piscine aux verts is composed of pared-down images – made entirely of cut-out and recombined press photographs – that shift among painting, collage, photography, and text. This visual and semiotic dynamic thwarts any attempt to definitely qualify them in a single category…

Sven Augustijnen, Spectres – Érika Nimis

Ciel variable 96 – PERFORMING FOR THE IMAGE | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Erika Nimis | Artists: Sven Augustijnen

August 1, 2018 [originally published in French in CV96 in Winter 2014] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.

Gabriel Coutu-Dumont, The Way of the Willows – Sylvain Campeau

Ciel variable 96 – PERFORMING FOR THE IMAGE | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Sylvain Campeau | Artists: Gabriel Coutu-Dumont

August 6, 2018 [originally published in French in CV96 in Winter 2014] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.

SITEGEIST II – L’ESPRIT DES LIEUX

Ciel variable 96 – PERFORMING FOR THE IMAGE | Essays

[Hiver 2014] New works created for the first Ciel variable fund-raising campaign following the first section of works published in the issue 94 of the magazine, in May 2013 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 […]

Les Rencontres d’Arles – Serge Allaire, Arles in Black

Ciel variable 96 – PERFORMING FOR THE IMAGE | Essays
Authors: Serge Allaire

August 8, 2018 [originally published in CV96 in Winter 2014] — Attending the inaugural week of the Rencontres is always a rather frenetic experience, with almost fifty exhibitions to see, as well as the associated programming and a three-day colloquium, not to mention the daily encounters and debates during which artists, curators, and critics comment on the exhibitions, and the evenings at the Théâtre antique. And then, there are the after-hours activities…

Le Mois de la Photo à Montréal 2013 – Zoë Tousignant, Drone: The Automated Image

Ciel variable 96 – PERFORMING FOR THE IMAGE | Essays
Authors: Zoë Tousignant | Artists: Barbara Probst, David K. Ross, Donovan Wylie, Elina Brotherus, Ilse Bing, Jules Spinatsch, Michel Campeau, Mishka Henner, Trevor Paglen, Véronique Ducharme

August 13, 2018 [originally published in CV96 in Winter 2014] — The challenge faced by theme-based biennials is to propose a conceptual framework that allows a great number and wide diversity of artworks to be brought together while providing an original viewpoint that positively inflects the reading of the works gathered. Rarely has Le Mois de la Photo à Montréal offered such a cohesive and powerful curatorial statement as in its 13th edition, Drone: The Automated Image…

CONTACT 2013 : FIELD OF VISION – Jill Glessing, Expanding our Field with Contact Festival

Ciel variable 96 – PERFORMING FOR THE IMAGE | Essays
Authors: Jill Glessing | Artists: Adam Broomberg, Andrew Wright, Arnaud Maggs, Marie Cosindas, Marlene Creates, Meryl McMaster, Oliver Chanarin, Robert Flaherty, Sebastião Salgado

August 15, 2018 [originally published in CV96 in Winter 2014] — In its fifteenth year, Contact, the world’s largest photography festival, offered an expanded schedule of photography-based adventures that included films, workshops, 174 exhibitions, and a three-day symposium featuring international curators and critics. Following a line-up that included Geoffrey Batchen and Joel Snyder…

Kim Waldron, Beautiful Creatures – Sonia Pelletier, On the Job or in the Work

Ciel variable 96 – PERFORMING FOR THE IMAGE | Portfolios
Authors: Sonia Pelletier | Artists: Kim Waldron

August 20, 2018 [originally published in CV96 in Winter 2014] — Over the years, it has been possible to observe a strong trend in Kim Waldron’s photographic work  – a central theme or modus operandi that has been evident in her projects since the very beginning. The artist usually appears in her images, but although she is the central subject, she is not really performing a “spectacle of the self.” …

Marisa Portolese, Antonia’s Garden – Isa Tousignant, Tending the Garden

Ciel variable 96 – PERFORMING FOR THE IMAGE | Portfolios
Authors: Isa Tousignant | Artists: Marisa Portolese

August 22, 2018 [originally published in CV96 in Winter 2014] — Walk around in early winter and you may just spot a dash of colour peeking through from under the first coats of snow that blanket the front gardens. That’s a carnation. Long after the peonies, lilies, and daffodils have gone, this sturdy flower still shines its bright hues, in defiance of the season of death…

Jacynthe Carrier, Les Eux – Anne-Marie St-Jean Aubre, The Function of the Gaze in the Work of Jacynthe Carrier

Ciel variable 96 – PERFORMING FOR THE IMAGE | Portfolios
Authors: Anne-Marie St-Jean Aubre | Artists: Jacynthe Carrier

August 22, 2018 [originally published in CV96 in Winter 2014] — Up to now, a certain conception of painting came to mind when I thought of Jacynthe Carrier’s photographic and videographic work, not only because of the emphasis that she places on composition and narration in the creation of her works, but especially because of the type of gaze that these works draw…

Performing for the image

Ciel variable 96 – PERFORMING FOR THE IMAGE | Portfolios
Artists: Jacynthe Carrier, Kim Waldron, Marisa Portolese

These three montreal artists have in common the performative dimension of the images in their works. Bodies are staged in situations of intimacy, intrusion, or sacrifice to highlight how loved ones, strangers, and animals help to form our identity. JACYNTHE CARRIER Les Eux Here, we are as close as possible to bodies, in an interwoven […]

Making Image

Ciel variable 96 – PERFORMING FOR THE IMAGE | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon | Artists: Jacynthe Carrier, Kim Waldron, Marisa Portolese

The thematic section of this issue presents recent works by three Montreal artists from the perspective of the performative dimension of their images. In these works, the artists stage bodies in situations of intimacy, intrusive proximity, or confrontation with their own fears, to bring to light how loved ones, strangers, and even animals help to […]

Ciel variable 96 – PERFORMING FOR THE IMAGE

Ciel variable 96 – PERFORMING FOR THE IMAGE

[Winter 2014] These three Montreal artists have in common the performative dimension of the images in their works. Bodies are staged in situations of intimacy, intrusion, or sacrifice to highlight how loved ones, strangers, and animals help to form our identity. EDITORIAL PORTFOLIOS FOCUS EXHIBITIONS READINGS VOICES Purchase this issue

Paul Wombell, Drone: The Automated Image – Jacques Doyon

Ciel variable 95 – CYBER / ESPACE / PUBLIC | Interviews
Authors: Jacques Doyon, Paul Wombell

April 4, 2018 [originally published in CV95 in Fall 2013] — You have articulated the theme of Le Mois de la photo à Montreal around the title Drone: The Automated Image, and you have written, “The camera is a sophisticated instrument with its own laws and its own agency” and “The artists raise an important question: do cameras have a life of their own?” Can you elaborate on the implications of these statements? …

New and Worthy – Sonia Pelletier

Ciel variable 95 – CYBER / ESPACE / PUBLIC | Book Reviews, Readings
Authors: Sonia Pelletier

[Fall 2013] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. Luis Jacob, Tromper l’œil (Londres, R.-U., Black Dog Publishing, 2013, 224 p., fr.) Glamour is Theft: A User’s Guide to General Idea 1969-1978 (Toronto: Art Gallery of York University, 2013, 256 pp.,Eng.) […]

Picturing Atrocity, Photography in Crisis – Jean-François Thibault

Ciel variable 95 – CYBER / ESPACE / PUBLIC | Book Reviews, Readings
Authors: Jean-François Thibault

April 9, 2018 [originally published in French in CV95 in Fall 2013] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.

Ariella Azoulay, Civil Imagination, A Political Ontology of Photography – Érika Wicky

Ciel variable 95 – CYBER / ESPACE / PUBLIC | Book Reviews, Readings
Authors: Erika Wicky

April 11, 2018 [originally published in French in CV95 in Fall 2013] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.

Jessica Auer, Studies on How to View Landscape – Anne Pilorget

Ciel variable 95 – CYBER / ESPACE / PUBLIC | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Anne Pilorget | Artists: Jessica Auer

April 16, 2018 [originally published in French in CV95 in Fall 2013] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.

Nicolas Lévesque et Stéphane Pichard, Notes et documents sur le saisissement – Emmanuel Simard

Ciel variable 95 – CYBER / ESPACE / PUBLIC | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Emmanuel Simard | Artists: Nicolas Lévesque, Stéphane Pichard

April 18, 2018 [originally published in French in CV95 in Fall 2013] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.

Chih-Chien Wang, Aussi loin que nous soyons, aussi près que je peux – Sonia Pelletier

Ciel variable 95 – CYBER / ESPACE / PUBLIC | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Sonia Pelletier | Artists: Chih-Chien Wang

April 23, 2018 [originally published in French in CV95 in Fall 2013] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.

Isabelle Hayeur, Vraisemblances – Christian Roy

Ciel variable 95 – CYBER / ESPACE / PUBLIC | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Christian Roy | Artists: Isabelle Hayeur

April 25, 2018 [originally published in French in CV95 in Fall 2013] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.

Alain Pratte, Des morts exemplaires – Zoë Tousignant

Ciel variable 95 – CYBER / ESPACE / PUBLIC | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Zoë Tousignant | Artists: Alain Pratte

April 30, 2018 [originally published in CV95 in Fall 2013] — Obituaries, I am told, become a part of everyday life once you reach a certain age. At one point, these public announcements of death made in local newspapers on a daily or weekly basis take on more significance as you begin to recognize, either literally or figuratively, the names and faces of those who have died. Regularly reading obituaries is a way to both defy and ease oneself into death…

Sébastien Cliche, La doublure – Charles Guilbert

Ciel variable 95 – CYBER / ESPACE / PUBLIC | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Charles Guilbert | Artists: Sébastien Cliche

May 2, 2018 [originally published in French in CV95 in Fall 2013] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.

Collection Black Star and Alfredo Jaar, Human Rights Human Wrongs / The Politics of Images – Laurent Vernet

Ciel variable 95 – CYBER / ESPACE / PUBLIC | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Laurent Vernet | Artists: Alfredo Jaar

May 7, 2018 [originally published in French in CV95 in Fall 2013] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.

Lynne Cohen, False Clues: Space Within Place – Philippe Guillaume

Ciel variable 95 – CYBER / ESPACE / PUBLIC | Essays
Authors: Philippe Guillaume | Artists: Lynne Cohen

May 9, 2018 [originally published in CV95 in Fall 2013] — Lynne Cohen’s recent exhibition at the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal presents much more than a display of captivating and masterful large-size photographs of interior spaces. At first glance, False Clues could be described as an imposing photographic project documenting ordinary interior spaces. However, the titles of the twenty-five chromogenic prints and fifteen gelatin-silver prints selected for the show (like those of most of her photographs) discourage any documentary connotation…

Donald McCullin, Collision, Helen Doyle, Representing War and Social Conflicts? – Pierre Dessureault

Ciel variable 95 – CYBER / ESPACE / PUBLIC | Essays
Authors: Pierre Dessureault | Artists: Bertrand Carrière, Donald McCullin, Helen Doyle, Michael Mitchell

May 14, 2018 [originally published in CV95 in Fall 2013] — By a strange coincidence, two exhibitions – a Donald McCullin retrospective and Collision: Conflict and Its Consequences – at the National Gallery of Canada, as well as a film, Dans un océan d’images, featured at the recent International Festival of Films on Art (FIFA) in Montreal, have presented a wide range of practices related to how photographs portray war and social conflict…

John Gossage, The Photobook: Reflections on Several Recent Projects – Alexis Desgagnés

Ciel variable 95 – CYBER / ESPACE / PUBLIC | Essays
Authors: Alexis Desgagnés | Artists: John Gossage

May 16, 2018 [originally published in CV95 in Fall 2013] — If there is one category that seems to have escaped the crisis in the book-publishing sector engendered by the rise of digital publishing, it is photobooks, which are currently appearing at such a rate that it is legitimate to think they will eventually supplant exhibitions as the main means of dissemination of photography and, especially, photographic creativity…

Land/Slide, An exhibition on possible futures – Janine Marchessault, Activating the Archives

Ciel variable 95 – CYBER / ESPACE / PUBLIC | Portfolios
Authors: Janine Marchessault | Artists: Dave Colangelo, Jean-Michel Crettaz, Jennie Suddick, Mark-David Hosale, Michael Snow, Patricio Davila, Philip Hoffman

May 22, 2018 [originally published in CV95 in Fall 2013] — Images are connected to our physical environments more dramatically than ever before – literally opening up new spaces of interactivity and connection that transform the experience of being in the city, its semiotic forms, and its modes of public gathering, navigation, and movement…

Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller, Alter Bahnhof Video Walk – Christine Ross, The Affective Historicization of Public Spaces

Ciel variable 95 – CYBER / ESPACE / PUBLIC | Portfolios
Authors: Christine Ross | Artists: George Bures Miller, Janet Cardiff

May 23, 2018 [originally published in CV95 in Fall 2013] — Since the 1990s, spatial art – a category that has broadened to include installation, architectural environments, relational interventions, (…) – has led to a major redefinition of the relationship between art and the public space…

Karen Elaine Spencer, Hey! Mike – Daniel Fiset, Textualizing Space, Spatializing Discourse

Ciel variable 95 – CYBER / ESPACE / PUBLIC | Portfolios
Authors: Daniel Fiset | Artists: Karen Elaine Spencer

May 28, 2018 [originally published in CV95 in Fall 2013] — In the autumn of 2012, a large brown envelope addressed to me arrived at my apartment. Inside it was a signed inkjet print of a colourful typographic exercise, announcing via an enigmatic sentence – hey mike please wipe up any spills that may occur – the genesis of the latest project by Montreal artist Karen Elaine Spencer…

Jon Rafman, 9 eyes – Christelle Proulx, The Nine Eyes of Google Street View

Ciel variable 95 – CYBER / ESPACE / PUBLIC | Portfolios
Authors: Christelle Proulx | Artists: Jon Rafman

May 30, 2018 [originally published in CV95 in Fall 2013] — The “nine eyes” in Jon Rafman’s project refer to the photographic device mounted on the roofs of Google cars. These cars have been travelling the world’s roads since 2007, equipped with cameras with nine lenses, taking pictures of streets – images automatically in street view – for use with the Google Maps tool…

Dominic Gagnon, La trilogie du Web – Élène Tremblay, Cameraless remote documentaries

Ciel variable 95 – CYBER / ESPACE / PUBLIC | Portfolios
Authors: Élène Tremblay | Artists: Dominic Gagnon

June 4, 2018 [originally published in CV95 in Fall 2013] — In his Web trilogy – the films RIP in Pieces America, Pieces and Love All to Hell, and Big Kiss Goodnight (2009–13) – Dominic Gagnon finds video excerpts on the Internet, which he describes as a cinémathèque or film archive, and recombines them to produce what he calls “films about people who film themselves.”

Reciprocities: Some Reflections on Not-so-illogical Conjunctions – Suzanne Paquet

Ciel variable 95 – CYBER / ESPACE / PUBLIC | Portfolios
Authors: Suzanne Paquet

June 6, 2018 [originally published in CV95 in Fall 2013] — Roland Barthes once attempted to define the nature of photography as “a new category of space-time: spatial immediacy and temporal anteriority.” In the photograph, he wrote, was produced “an illogical conjunction between the here-now and the there-then.” Some thirty years later, Francis Jauréguiberry remarked that there is always a great deal of elsewhere in our here; he was talking about the portable telephone…

Guest editor: Suzanne Paquet

Ciel variable 95 – CYBER / ESPACE / PUBLIC | Portfolios
Authors: Suzanne Paquet

With essays by Suzanne Paquet, Élène Tremblay, Christelle Proulx, Daniel Fiset, Christine Ross, Janine Marchessault and works by Dominic Gagnon, Jon Rafman, Karen Elaine Spencer, Janet Cardiff et George Bures Miller and the exhibition Land/Slide: Possible Futures Even though, in the view of many authors, it seems that we are now living only in the […]

Broadening the Public Space

Ciel variable 95 – CYBER / ESPACE / PUBLIC | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon

The thematic section CYBER / ESPACE / PUBLIC examines some of the issues related to the digital regime of images and their circulation on networks. It explores the many correspondences and reciprocities that are being woven between concrete spaces and various technological devices, whether portable (smartphones, applications of all types, geolocation instruments) or anchored in […]

Ciel variable 95 – CYBER / ESPACE / PUBLIC

Ciel variable 95 – CYBER / ESPACE / PUBLIC

  [Fall 2013] The transition to the digital image regime entails a series of permutations that noticeably modify our relations with a common public space and how art is produced. Our experience of concrete spaces and temporality, as well as the distinctions between private sphere and public exhibition, between amateur and professional productions, are totally […]

Bonnie Rubenstein, Field of Vision CONTACT Photography Festival – Jacques Doyon

Ciel variable 94 – PUBLIC ART | Interviews
Authors: Bonnie Rubenstein, Jacques Doyon | Artists: Erik Kessels

January 31, 2018 [originally published in CV94 in Spring 2013] — Bonnie Rubenstein has been a director at CONTACT since 2002, and the festival’s artistic director Originally from Toronto, she holds an MFA from the School of the Art Institute in Chicago. As curatorial assistant for the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, she worked on several groundbreaking exhibitions.

New and worthy – Sonia Pelletier

Ciel variable 94 – PUBLIC ART | Book Reviews, Readings
Authors: Sonia Pelletier

[Spring-Summer 2013] By Sonia Pelletier Des monographies Ian Wallace: At the Intersection of Painting and Photo­graphy (London UK: Black Dog Publishing; Vancouver: Vancouver Art Gallery, 2012, 352 pp., Eng.) This publi­cation, which accompanies the eponymous exhibition curated by Daina Augaitis, is the most comprehensive publication devoted to the work of Canadian artist Ian Wallace. Reflecting […]

Mikhael Subotzky, Retinal Shift – Alexis Desgagnés

Ciel variable 94 – PUBLIC ART | Book Reviews, Readings
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.

Light Years, Conceptual Art and the Photograph 1964-1977 – Felicity Tayler

Ciel variable 94 – PUBLIC ART | Book Reviews, Readings
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…

Archival Dialogues: Reading the Black Star Collection – Andrea Carson Barker

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.

Charles-Antoine Blais-Métivier et Serge-Olivier Rondeau, After Faceb00k – Christelle Proulx

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.

Birthe Piontek, The Idea of North – Gentiane La France

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.

Lorna Bauer, Grey is a Colour, Gray is a Color – Stephen Horne

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…

Alain Laframboise, Figures – Sylvain Campeau

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.

Jacynthe Carrier, Parcours – Manon Tourigny

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.

Robert Duchesnay, Le studio et l’anti-studio de Joseph Beuys et de Buckminster Fuller – Pierre Rannou

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.

Agence Stock Photo – Jérôme Delgado

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.

Milutin Gubash, Consolation, Les faux-semblants – Anne-Marie St-Jean Aubre

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.

SITEGEIST – THE SPIRIT OF A PLACE – Ciel variable’s first fund-raising campaign

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 […]

Omer Fast, Continuous Coverage – Blake Fitzpatrick

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…

Anticoste of Richard Baillargeon, Fragments for a History – Pierre Dessureault

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.

Patrick Dionne et Miki Gingras, Identité Centre-Sud – Pierre Rannou, Beyond a Neighbourhood, a Community

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…