[Fall 2015] STRATA features works by Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin, Moyra Davey, and Marc-Antoine K. Phaneuf. The comprehension of these bodies of work assumes a peeling away of the various strata of signs that form them. ÉDITORIAL PORTFOLIOS FOCUS EXPOSITIONS LECTURES PAROLES Purchase this issue
Ciel variable 101 - STRATA | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon
Is fantasizing always diametrically opposed to the truth? Or does it tend to become an inherent component of reality – to blend with it, be superimposed on it – to the point that the two shape each other? The recent Bugingo affair – involving a Montreal journalist who apparently invented a series of facts and […]
Ciel variable 101 - STRATA | Portfolios
Authors: Alexis Desgagnés | Artists: Adam Broomberg, Marc-Antoine K. Phaneuf, Moyra Davey, Oliver Chanarin
In geology, the concept of stratification refers to a process during which sediments accumulate in layers, which eventually form more or less heterogeneous sedimentary ensembles but nevertheless remain distinct units of meaning. We often find such ensembles on the edges of paths or roads; they offer the possibility of a simultaneous reading of many strata […]
Ciel variable 101 - STRATA | Portfolios
Authors: Paul Paper | Artists: Adam Broomberg, Oliver Chanarin
August 15, 2019 [originally published in CV101 in Fall 2015] — Scarti is a recent photographic series, and a book of the same title, by Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin. The project revives the photographers’ 2003 series Ghetto. It is, however, by no means a straight reprint. The title – Italian for “scraps” – gives away an important aspect of this reuse…
Ciel variable 101 - STRATA | Portfolios
Authors: Isa Tousignant | Artists: Moyra Davey
August 12, 2019 [originally published in CV101 in Fall 2015] — Moyra Davey’s Copperheads series has had a few existences. It was born in 1990, soon after the Canadian-born artist moved to New York, where she still resides. In those early days it was a project that lived a practically private life…
Ciel variable 101 - STRATA | Portfolios
Authors: Charles Guilbert | Artists: Marc-Antoine K. Phaneuf
August 7, 2019 [originally published in CV101 in Fall 2015] — Since 2012, Marc-Antoine K. Phaneuf has been working on a series of artworks titled Études préparatoires (dessins d’explosions), which he has presented in various venues and contexts. As he has often done in the past, Phaneuf revives found objects by inscribing them in a system of his own making.
Ciel variable 101 - STRATA | Essays
Authors: Sylvain Campeau | Artists: Doug Rickard, Jon Rafman, Michael Wolf, Mishka Henner
August 5, 2019 [originally published in CV101 in Fall 2015] — It has been a few years now since artists discovered that they could put Google Street View to artistic and critical use. The best-known case is no doubt Jon Rafman, who is pursuing – inexorably, I might be tempted to say – his 9-eyes project, for which he shamelessly pillages the Internet image bank that contains pictures taken by directional cameras affixed to Google Street View (GSV) cars…
Ciel variable 101 - STRATA | Essays
Authors: Bénédicte Ramade | Artists: Dana Claxton, Dayna Danger, Lori Blondeau, Meryl McMaster, Rosalie Favell, Shelley Niro, Skawennati, Terrance Houle
Dress codes categorize their users, signal their belonging to a social group: clothes worn in subcultures, from mods to punks,1 for example, act as symbols and incentives to resist normalcy and bourgeois society – considered, of course, to be coercive. In Indigenous cultures, artists have also appropriated clothes to resist the confinement of their representation […]
Ciel variable 101 - STRATA | Essays
Authors: Erika Nimis | Artists: Alessandro Aceri, Boris Nzebo, Christian Hanussek, Em’kal Eyongakpa, Ginette Daleu, Hervé Yamguen, Hervé Youmbi, Nicolas Eyidi, Patrick Wokmeni
July 31, 2019 [originally published in CV101 in Fall 2015] — Douala. Late January 2015. I take my first steps on the streets of this port city, the economic capital of Cameroon. Douala is a vibrant city that constantly eludes your grasp. First steps and already some reference points. We cannot speak of the contemporary scene in Douala without speaking of the art centres that form its identity.
Ciel variable 101 - STRATA | Exhibition Reviews
Authors: Vincent Lavoie | Artists: Benoit Aquin
July 29, 2019 [originally published in CV101 in Fall 2015] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.
Ciel variable 101 - STRATA | Exhibition Reviews
Authors: Anne-Marie Proulx | Artists: Raymonde April
July 3, 2019 [originally published in CV101 in Fall 2015] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.
Ciel variable 101 - STRATA | Exhibition Reviews
Authors: Alain Laframboise | Artists: Sophie Calle
July 2, 2019 [originally published in CV101 in Fall 2015] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.
Ciel variable 101 - STRATA | Exhibition Reviews
Authors: Vincent Brault | Artists: Sophie Calle
July 2, 2019 [originally published in CV101 in Fall 2015] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.
Ciel variable 101 - STRATA | Exhibition Reviews
Authors: Claire Moeder | Artists: Chih-Chien Wang
June 27, 2019 [originally published in CV101 in Fall 2015] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.
Ciel variable 101 - STRATA | Exhibition Reviews
Authors: Michèle Cohen Hadria | Artists: Mark Lewis
June 25, 2019 [originally published in CV101 in Fall 2015] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.
Ciel variable 101 - STRATA | Exhibition Reviews
Authors: James D. Campbell | Artists: Alain Lefort
June 20, 2019 [originally published in CV101 in Fall 2015] — Lefort fittingly cribs his title from American author Herman Melville’s 1851 magnum opus Moby Dick: the Pequod is a fictitious nineteenth-century Nantucket whaling ship that appears in the novel as an instrument of revenge…
Ciel variable 101 - STRATA | Exhibition Reviews
Authors: Judith Parker | Artists: Manon Labrecque
June 18, 2019 [originally published in CV101 in Fall 2015] — The artist’s body as a site for the investigation of the internal dualities of the self is the subject of a compelling exhibition of video projections, kinetic sculptures, and drawings by Montreal artist Manon Labrecque…
Ciel variable 101 - STRATA | Exhibition Reviews
Authors: Adam Barbu | Artists: Andrew Wright
June 12, 2019 [originally published in CV101 in Fall 2015] — In recent years, Ottawa-based artist Andrew Wright has produced numerous bodies of work that propose new readings on the ontology of the image. In particular, Wright’s exhibition at Patrick Mikhail’s new Montreal gallery space, titled Untitled Photographic Pictures, presents a series of large-scale photographic works and two mixed-media sculptural works…
Ciel variable 101 - STRATA | Book Reviews
Authors: Samuel Gaudreau-Lalande | Artists: Joan Fontcuberta
June 10, 2019 [originally published in CV101 in Fall 2015] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.
Ciel variable 101 - STRATA | Book Reviews
Authors: Alexis Desgagnés
June 5, 2019 [originally published in CV101 in Fall 2015] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.
Ciel variable 101 - STRATA | Book Reviews
Authors: Alexis Desgagnés
[Fall 2015] You can read the bilingual article by switching over to the French version of this page : CV101 – Ouvrages à souligner. Thierry Gervais (avec la collaboration de Gaëlle Morel), La fabrique de l’information visuelle. Photographies et magazines d’actualité, Paris, Éditions Textuel, 2015, 240 p., ill., fr. Hilde Van Gelder, ed., Allan Sekula: […]
Ciel variable 101 - STRATA | Interviews
Authors: Christine Palmiéri, Joan Fontcuberta | Artists: Joan Fontcuberta
June 3, 2019 [originally published in CV101 in Automne 2015] — Following up on a first interview with Catalan artist Joan Fontcuberta published in this magazine in 2013 (CV 93), Ciel variable is marking the fourteenth edition of Le Mois de la Photo à Montréal, of which Fontcuberta is the curator, by reprinting an interview by Christine Palmiéri…