Ciel variable 79 - COLOURS OF THE CITY | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon
[Summer 2008] by Jacques Doyon Photographing the street, over time, to record the evolution of the city and how it is used is a strategy that remains current. In these pages, it reveals the survival of small businesses in the era of globalization of markets, it allows us to follow the radical transformation of a […]
Ciel variable 79 - COLOURS OF THE CITY | Portfolios
Authors: Petra Halkes | Artists: Zoe Leonard
[Summer 2008] In her most recent series of photographic works, Zoe Leonard focuses her square viewfinder on small shops and businesses on three continents. This series, titled Analogue (1997–2007), documents discount stores, repair shops, second-hand stores, restaurants, and flea markets that are separated by thousands of miles. Yet, they share a common consumerism vocabulary and […]
Ciel variable 79 - COLOURS OF THE CITY | Portfolios
Authors: Pierre Dessureault | Artists: Robert Walker
[Summer 2008] In today’s world, the blurring between the urban landscape and the mediascape increasingly typifies our experience of our environment. Robert Walker’s body of work illustrates this blurring in a remarkable manner. The images presented in this portfolio span multiple continents and decades. Over the years, illusionary compositions and vibrant colours have become trademarks […]
Ciel variable 79 - COLOURS OF THE CITY | Portfolios
Authors: Helga Pakasaar | Artists: Fred Herzog
[Summer 2008] For more than fifty years, Fred Herzog has roamed the streets of Vancouver. His camera dwells on the raw fabric of the city: second-hand stores, restaurants, storefront windows, barbershops, and vacant lots, and the people using those spaces. The selection of images presented here stems from a body of work that comprises hundreds […]
Ciel variable 79 - COLOURS OF THE CITY | Essays
Authors: Sylvie Parent | Artists: Beat Brogle, Ethan Ham, Marika Dermineur, Philippe Zimmermann, Reynald Drouhin, Stéphane Degoutin, Timothé Rolin
[Summer 2008] by Sylvie Parent Thanks to the growing popularity of digital cameras, with their direct connectivity to computers, the number of images sent by e-mail and of photographs published on the network has been growing exponentially. The rapid appropriation of these technologies by the public has given rise to increasingly widespread activities such as […]
Ciel variable 79 - COLOURS OF THE CITY | Essays
Authors: Jean Gagnon | Artists: Gary Hill, Jim Campbell, Nam June Paik
[Summer 2008] by Jean Gagnon My father, like many in his generation,1 was a big fan of family photographs. Anything and everything was an excuse to take “slides,” as he called them. We were living in Quebec City, and, aside from the pictures taken at Christmas and on summer trips to Maine, he amassed good documentation […]
Ciel variable 79 - COLOURS OF THE CITY | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Maria Antonella Pelizzari | Artists: Fazal Sheikh, Tacita Dean
[Summer 2008] International Center of Photography, New York, January 18 – May 4, 2008 An overall sense of clutter and discomfort pervades the installation of Archive Fever: Uses of the Document in Contemporary Art, the current exhibition at the International Center of Photography (ICP) curated by Okui Enwenzor and modlelled on Jacques Derrida’s seminal essay […]
Ciel variable 79 - COLOURS OF THE CITY | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Vincent Bonin | Artists: Gilles Mahé
[SUmmer 2008] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. VOX, centre de l’image, Montréal 26 janvier – 15 mars, 2007
Ciel variable 79 - COLOURS OF THE CITY | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Johanna Mizgala | Artists: Pascal Grandmaison
[Summer 2008] Carleton University Art Gallery, Ottawa January 14 – April 13, 2008 A rupture occurs when an action is played out in its conventional sequence and then witnessed in reverse. The action’s asynchronous interconnection serves as a narrative and visual conceit; time runs forwards and backwards in a rearward déjà vu. In static form, […]
Ciel variable 79 - COLOURS OF THE CITY | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Jean-François Bélisle | Artists: Kerry Tribe, Nancy Davenport
[Summer 2008] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. DHC – Art, Montréal, 22 février – 25 mai 2008
Ciel variable 79 - COLOURS OF THE CITY | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Maria Zimmermann Brendel | Artists: Mehraneh Atashi, Shadi Ghadirian
[Summer 2008] Cicero Galerie for Political Photography, Berlin, Germany November 20, 2007 – January 18, 2008 The interest in the exhibition Made in Tehran: Six Women’s Views was immense. This is not surprising with photography by artists who call themselves “the children of the [Islamic] Revolution.” They are the next generation, after Shirin Neshat, and […]
Ciel variable 79 - COLOURS OF THE CITY | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Sylvain Campeau | Artists: Alain Laframboise
[Summer 2008] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.
Ciel variable 79 - COLOURS OF THE CITY | Exhibition reviews
Authors: James D. Campbell | Artists: Charles Gagnon
[Summer 2008] Galerie Roger Bellemare, Montreal October 6 – October 27, 2007 The stark elegance of Charles Gagnon’s photographic oeuvre is one of its defining characteristics. It is always, however, underscored by powerfully enigmatic markers. Those indexical markers are like fingers pointing to unseen presences – or a transcendent reality. Gagnon was always a champion […]
Ciel variable 79 - COLOURS OF THE CITY | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Julie-Ann Latulippe | Artists: Clara Gutsche, David Miller
[Summer 2008] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.
Ciel variable 79 - COLOURS OF THE CITY | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Sadira Rodrigues | Artists: Lida Abdul
[Summer 2008] Centre A & Western Front, Vancouver January 23 – March 1, 2008 Born in Kabul, Afghanistan, in 1973, Lida Abdul lived in Germany and India as a refugee after being forced to leave her homeland following the Soviet invasion of 1980. This brief biography seems critical, as it is an integral subject in […]
Ciel variable 79 - COLOURS OF THE CITY | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Petra Halkes | Artists: Cheryl Pagurek
[Summer 2008] Patrick Mikhail Gallery, Ottawa, January 9 – February 3, 2008 Over the years, Cheryl Pagurek’s art practice has gradually shifted from sculpture and installations to printed photographs and, finally, in the present exhibition, to the ultimate Ephemera of moving digital imagery. The more fleeting her work becomes, however, the more strongly it shows […]
Ciel variable 79 - COLOURS OF THE CITY | Book Reviews
Authors: Olivier Asselin | Artists: Michel Campeau
[Summer 2008] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. Michel Campeau Martin Parr (ed.), Nazraeli Press, 2007, 80 pp.
Ciel variable 79 - COLOURS OF THE CITY | Book Reviews
Authors: Sylvain Campeau
[Summer 2008] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.
Ciel variable 79 - COLOURS OF THE CITY | Entrevues, Interviews
Authors: Chantal Pontbriand, Jacques Doyon
[Summer 2008] For thirty years, Chantal Pontbriand has been the guiding light of the magazine Parachute. From the beginning, she positioned it among the internationally significant magazines. In parallel with its publishing activities, the magazine organized a series of events and conferences that were just as notable. In April 2007, Parachute announced a suspension of […]
[Fall 2008 – Winter 2009] The image bank is an archive based on modalities of selection, indexation and thematic grouping which condition its usage. This apparatus is appropriated by artists to explore the contextual conditions of the reading of images. Visual literacy and the future of the « virtual museum » imagined by Malraux […]
Ciel variable 80 - IMAGE BANKS | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon
by Jacques Doyon The image bank is an archive structured by selection, indexing, and thematic cross-referencing procedures that determine how it is used. Artists appropriate this mechanism to explore the issues in visual culture and the contemporary future of the “virtual museum” prefigured by Malraux. They plead fundamentally for an attentive reading of images and […]
Ciel variable 80 - IMAGE BANKS | Portfolios
Authors: Cheryl Simon | Artists: Peter Piller
[Summer 2008] The Archive Peter Piller contains tens of thousands of press images that Piller started to collect while employed at an advertising agency. The numbing task of endlessly scanning publications day in and day out became engaging when Piller started to clip and organize images from the newspapers. His archive contain pictures that usually […]
Ciel variable 80 - IMAGE BANKS | Portfolios
Authors: Jean Gagnon | Artists: George Legrady
[Fall 2008] George Legrady’s recent Cell Tango project consists of a dynamically growing archive of cell-phone images, associated with indexical terms. When exhibited as a wall projection, the artwork unfolds a galaxy of images and the textual structure of their interaction. Pockets Full of Memories, Legrady’s previous project, had a similar structure. The project’s audience […]
Ciel variable 80 - IMAGE BANKS | Portfolios
Authors: James D. Campbell | Artists: Luis Jacob
[Fall 2008] By juxtaposing images of people interacting, architectural facades, works of art, pieces of furniture, and other motifs, Jacobs has woven a microcosm of humanity at work and at play. This album is a living portrait of the world, at the heart of which he has placed inter-subjectivity, exploration, and inventiveness. This grouping of […]
Ciel variable 80 - IMAGE BANKS | Essays
Authors: Vincent Bonin | Artists: General Idea, Marcel Duchamp, Pedro Friedeberg, Robert Filliou, Vincent Trasov
[Fall 2008] by Vincent Bonin In 1967, Jack Chambers of London, Ontario, received a letter from the National Gallery of Canada informing him that its staff was beginning to assemble a bank of two thousand slides on Canadian art and asking for his permission to reproduce the image of one of his works. He was […]
Ciel variable 80 - IMAGE BANKS | Essays
Authors: Zoë Tousignant | Artists: Yves Beauregard
[Fall 2008] by Zoë Tousignant From September 25, 2008, to January 4, 2009, the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec (MNBAQ) is presenting Quebec City and its Photographers, 1850–1908: The Yves Beauregard Collection, the first extensive exhibition of early Quebec photography to be organized by the museum in over twenty years. Quebec City and its […]
Ciel variable 80 - IMAGE BANKS | Essays
Authors: Serge Allaire
[Fall 2008] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.
Ciel variable 80 - IMAGE BANKS | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Gary Michael Dault | Artists: Susan Meiselas
[Fall 2008] Stephen Bulger Gallery, Toronto March 29 – April 26, 2008 Intimate Strangers could be seen as a revisitation and continuation of a world of documentary exploration that began thirty-five years ago for Magnum photographer Susan Meiselas, with her Carnival Strippers project. Carnival Strippers came about when Meiselas attached herself to a “girl show” […]
Ciel variable 80 - IMAGE BANKS | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Sylvain Campeau | Artists: Richard Baillargeon
[Fall 2008] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. Galerie Expression, St-Hyacinthe 15 mars au 27 avril 2008 Commissaire : Lisanne Nadeau
Ciel variable 80 - IMAGE BANKS | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Johanna Mizgala | Artists: Geoffrey James
[Fall 2008] National Gallery of Canada May 30 – October 19, 2008 Geoffrey James describes his photographs as the outcome of “walks with purpose.” His approach is both methodically and philosophically in opposition to the wanderings ascribed to other photographers interested in the landscape and in urban environments, who trust in happening upon inspiration in […]
Ciel variable 80 - IMAGE BANKS | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Colette Tougas | Artists: Nelson Henricks
[Fall 2008] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. Articule, Montréal 29 février au 30 mars 2008
Ciel variable 80 - IMAGE BANKS | Exhibition reviews
Authors: James D. Campbell | Artists: Emmanuelle Léonard
[Fall 2008] Donald Browne Galery, Montreal April 19–May 24, 2008 In her new exhibition at Galerie Donald Browne, Emmanuel Léonard made her consummately subversive voice heard from the outset. Her singular art of juxtaposition, theatricality, gathered “evidence,” and narrative layering once again adumbrated an environmental volume that radically exceeded the sum of its parts. The […]
Ciel variable 80 - IMAGE BANKS | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Sylvie Lacerte | Artists: Rose-Marie E. Goulet
[Fall 2008] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. Voiture de métro de Montréal 24 septembre 2007 au 31 mars 2008
Ciel variable 80 - IMAGE BANKS | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Jean-François Bélisle | Artists: Luc Delahaye, Martin Parr, Robert Burley
[Fall 2008] Contact Photography Festival Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art, Toronto May 1 – 31, 2008 On a bright Saturday morning back in early May, I came upon a strange sight on Queen Street West. In front of the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art (MoCCA), and spilling onto the sidewalk, a considerable crowd had gathered […]
Ciel variable 80 - IMAGE BANKS | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Anne-Marie St-Jean Aubre | Artists: Yann Pocreau
[Fall 2008] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. Galerie Lilian Rodriguez, Montréal 19 avril au 24 mai 2008
Ciel variable 80 - IMAGE BANKS | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Norman F. Cornett | Artists: Éliane Excoffier
[Fall 2008] Galerie Simon Blais, Montreal February 27 – March 29, 2008 Although we can still see the etymological relationship between the modern term “technology” and the ancient Greek word techne, nowadays we generally lose sight of its original meaning – art, craft, skill. Éliane Excoffier’s latest show at Galerie Simon Blais reminds us that […]
Ciel variable 80 - IMAGE BANKS | Exhibition reviews
Authors: John K. Grande | Artists: David McMillan, John Ganis, Robert ParkeHarrison, Shana ParkeHarrison
[Fall 2008] National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa June 27–October 13, 2008 A more timely exhibition of photography there never was. And with a shock-primed title such as Imaging a Shattering Earth: Contemporary Photography and the Environmental Debate, one is put on edge from the beginning. Although the bias in the photographs is toward documentary and […]
Ciel variable 80 - IMAGE BANKS | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Virginie Doré Lemonde | Artists: Denis Villeneuve
[Fall 2008] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. Phi Group, Montréal
Ciel variable 80 - IMAGE BANKS | Interviews
Authors: Jacques Doyon | Artists: Angela Grauerholz
[Fall 2008] by Jacques Doyon Jacques Doyon : Over the course of a photographic practice spanning more than twenty years, you have shown consistent interest in the archival aspects of images and the architecture of their storage and display. You’ve also produced artist’s books and installations reflecting on museum practices. In 2000, you organized an […]
[Spring 2009] This issue focuses on the side effects of the accelerated modernization of China: Shanghai is portrayed in an odd half-light that bespeaks the end of an era; landscapes discoloured by dust storms testify to a rapid desertification; a city that lives under water hints at vast tracts of land that have been submerged… […]
Ciel variable 81 - MADE IN CHINA | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon
[Spring 2009] by Jacques Doyon In this issue, we bring together images testifying to the impacts of accelerated modernization in today’s China. The photographers who made them have varying degrees of professional experience linked to commissions for the media, corporations, or advertising. They have nevertheless cultivated a personal vision and produced photographic series based on […]
Ciel variable 81 - MADE IN CHINA | Portfolios
Authors: Amish Morrell | Artists: Greg Girard
[Spring 2009] Until recently, a former resident of Shanghai from the 1930s or 1940s, returning to the city decades later, would have a good chance of being able to locate his or her old home since urban development for profit was suspended for nearly a half century. However, as Shanghai modernizes, entire neighbourhoods that were […]
Ciel variable 81 - MADE IN CHINA | Portfolios
Authors: William E. Ewing | Artists: Benoit Aquin
[Spring 2009] In November 2008, Benoit Aquin won the prestigious Prix Pictet for his series on desertification and dust storms in China. One of the greatest environmental disasters of our time, the Chinese “Dust Bowl” is probably the largest conversion of productive land into sand anywhere in the world. In November 2008, Benoit Aquin won […]
Ciel variable 81 - MADE IN CHINA | Portfolios
Authors: Sylvain Campeau | Artists: Yang Yi
[Spring 2009] In 2009, the Three Gorges Dam will have flooded hundreds of square kilometres in central China. Chinese artist Yang Yi will see his hometown, Kaixian, being submerged during the last phase of the project. Employing mastery of both photography and digital techniques, Yi shows us ghost towns engulfed by water whose inhabitants, fitted out […]
Ciel variable 81 - MADE IN CHINA | Essays
Authors: Elizabeth Matheson | Artists: Oscar Muñoz
[Spring 2009] We live in an age of disappearances, a time of loss and change, with mass extinctions and vanishing eco-regions. These profound, sinister planetary transformations remind us of the intimate link between ourselves and our actions in the visible world. Yet it seems as if this rapid unravelling has left us dumb with dread and […]
Ciel variable 81 - MADE IN CHINA | Essays
Authors: Alexandre Robertson | Artists: Hughes Le Caine
[Spring 2009] “… a change in time is enough to re-create the world and ourselves.” — Marcel ProustDespite his pioneering role in the development of musique concrète, Hugh Le Caine (1914–77), a well-known physicist, inventor of electronic musical instruments, and self-taught composer, remains a relatively obscure figure: information about him is limited almost exclusively to […]
Ciel variable 81 - MADE IN CHINA | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Sylvain Campeau | Artists: Isabelle Hayeur, Ivan Binet, Mathieu Beauséjour, Patrick Altman
[Spring 2009] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. Centre VU, Québec 19 juin au 10 août 2008
Ciel variable 81 - MADE IN CHINA | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Johanna Mizgala | Artists: Richard Misrach
[Spring 2009] Henry Art Gallery, Seattle, Washington 11 October 2008 – 18 January 2009 Over the past three decades, Richard Misrach has created a body of work that attempts to reconcile his two lifelong passions: a socio-political activism forged during his student days at Berkeley in the late 1960s and an affinity for images of […]
Ciel variable 81 - MADE IN CHINA | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Elitza Dulguerova | Artists: Johan Grimonprez, Köken Ergun
[Spring 2009] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. Galerie Leonard et Bina Ellen, Université Concordia 29 août au 11 octobre 2008 Commissaire : Séamus Kealy (Blackwood Gallery, Université de Toronto / Mississauga)
Ciel variable 81 - MADE IN CHINA | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Jacob Korczynski | Artists: Rivane Neuenschwander, Sharon Lockhart, Wolfgang Tillmans
[Spring 2009] Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, May 3, 2008–January 11, 2009 Despite fulfilling several different roles during its century-plus history, the Carnegie International exists today as a quadrennial exhibition of international contemporary art. This second-oldest exhibition of its kind opened just months after the first edition of the Venice Biennale, but today the Carnegie International is only […]
Ciel variable 81 - MADE IN CHINA | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Erin Silver | Artists: Molly Landreth
IPS gallery, Montreal November 1 – December 20, 2008 From Barack Obama’s gay-inclusive acceptance speech to the controversial passing of the Prop. 8 ban on gay marriage, the lives of gay Americans are, for better or for worse, on the public radar in the United States. Molly Landreth moves beyond party platforms and ballot boxes, embarking on […]
Ciel variable 81 - MADE IN CHINA | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Virginie Doré Lemonde | Artists: Olivier Asselin
[Spring 2009] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.
Ciel variable 81 - MADE IN CHINA | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Cheryl Simon | Artists: Tim Clark
[Spring 2009] Leonard and Bina Ellen Art Gallery Concordia University, Montreal October 23–November 29, 2008 Curator: David Tomas, with the collaboration of Michèle Thériault and Eduardo Ralickas The commingling of academia and art in Tim Clark’s conceptual practice is announced at the outset of his recent retrospective exhibition with the installation of a small shelf […]
Ciel variable 81 - MADE IN CHINA | Book Reviews
Authors: Céline Dion
[Spring 2009] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.
Ciel variable 81 - MADE IN CHINA | Interviews
Authors: Jacques Doyon | Artists: Antoni Muntadas
[Spring 2009] The internationally known artist Antoni Muntadas will present a new exhibition titled The Construction of Fear at Galerie SBC art contemporain in Montreal, from 28 February to 18 April 2009. Muntadas is interested in social, political, and communications issues, the relationship between public and private space within social frameworks, and the ways that channels […]
[Summer 2009] Although it is rarely installed as permanent public art, photography nevertheless has a growing presence within the urban public space. More and more artistic and institutional initiatives are encroaching on the territory of advertising – posting in all its forms – to dispute this high-visibility space and offer alternative ways of looking at […]
Ciel variable 82 – PUBLIC ART | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon
[Summer 2009] by Jacques Doyon This issue offers some preliminary observations on the presence of art photography in urban public art. When we think of “public art,” the governmental public art programs in effect in Quebec and Montreal for several decades immediately spring to mind. Photography, however, has not been well represented in these programs. […]
Ciel variable 82 – PUBLIC ART | Portfolios
Authors: Jacques Doyon | Artists: Adad Hannah, Alexandre Castonguay, Carlos & Jason Sanchez, Christophe Beauregard, Clara Gutsche, Denis Farley, Éric Tabuchi, Florian Böhm, Geneviève Cadieux, Isabelle Hayeur, Jessica Auer, Josée Pedneault, Marie-Jeanne Musiol, Max Wright, Neil Budzinski, Raymonde April, Roberto Pellegrinuzzi, Ron Terada, Suzanne Opton
[Summer 2009] by Jacques Doyon For several decades, contemporary art has been on display in the public spaces of Quebec’s urban areas, thanks to the creation of public art programs. Photography was long excluded from these programs, and even today it has limited visibility. Some initiatives have been undertaken in recent years, however, that stand […]
Ciel variable 82 – PUBLIC ART | Portfolios
Authors: Bernard Vallée, Pierre Anctil | Artists: ATSA
[Summer 2009] ATSA (Action terroriste socialement acceptable, or Socially Acceptable Terrorist Action), a collective founded in 1997 by artists Pierre Allard and Annie Roy, is well known for its public interventions. Every year since 1998, it has produced State of Emergency, an urban refugee camp for Montreal’s homeless. In general, the collective’s interventions question the […]
Ciel variable 82 – PUBLIC ART | Portfolios
Authors: Patrice Loubier | Artists: Peter Gnass
[Summer 2009] Last autumn, Peter Gnass produced an intervention in the form of a temporary posting on the façades of a dozen Montreal cultural sites (galleries, museums, studios, art schools). The poster featured a long band of close-up pictures of ten statues, seen from the back, on which was superimposed a series of letters that […]
Ciel variable 82 – PUBLIC ART | Essays
Authors: Suzanne Paquet | Artists: Jean-François Cantin, Ken Lum, Michel Lemieux, Nicolas Baier, Thomas Kneubühler, Victor Pilon
[Summer 2009] The world identifies with the quintessence of photographs. This identification does not occur for no reason. For the world itself is composed of a photographic face. . . . the world has become the photographic present, and the photographic present is fully perpetuated. ⎯ Siegfried Kracauer, 19271 Although photographs are generally flat, they […]
Ciel variable 82 – PUBLIC ART | Essays
Authors: Stephen Horne | Artists: Ken Lum, Krzysztof Wodiczko, Rebecca Belmore
[Summer 2009] In Montreal, as in many cities around the world, works of art have often been placed in “public” urban spaces. In some cases, the placement of works is accomplished through channels of bureaucratic control or corporate interest, while in other cases artists have thought of their actions as interventions in those spheres, even […]
Ciel variable 82 – PUBLIC ART | Essays
Authors: Johanna Mizgala | Artists: Brian Merrett, David Miller, Laurie Kang, Louise Abbott, Nicholas Hoban, Notman & Sandham, William Notman, William Notman & Son, Zoe Yuristy
[Summer 2009] Relevance is a word that permeates discussions about the role of museums within the social fabric of community. As repositories, museums have a primary function of cultivation not only of objects but also of a public to engage with them. Museums amass, describe, preserve, and, ultimately, display facets of their contents, arranged and […]
Ciel variable 82 – PUBLIC ART | Essays
Authors: Stéphane Bouchard
[Summer 2009] by Stéphane Bouchard Of all the creative support programs, Quebec’s policy for the integration of the arts with architecture and the environment (commonly known as the 1 percent program) offers some of the best visibility, as well as terrific financial support, to artists. This program allots unequalled sums to bring contemporary art into […]
Ciel variable 82 – PUBLIC ART | Essays
Authors: Martha Langford
[Summer 2009] The National Gallery of Canada (NGC), under the direction of Marc Mayer, has recently announced that the Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography (CMCP) will no longer occupy its building at 1 Rideau Canal. In fact, the building will no longer be a public space for the arts. It has been handed over to […]
Ciel variable 82 – PUBLIC ART | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Guy Sioui Durand | Artists: Arthur Renwick, Dana Claxton, Jeff Thomas, Shelley Niro
[Summer 2009] Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography at the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa October 31, 2008 – March 22, 2009 What if sacred masks and the geopolitical pomp of costumes had preceded posed portraits and scenes for the camera? Then, in the photographic gaze, not only would there be different works, but there would […]
Ciel variable 82 – PUBLIC ART | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Sylvain Campeau | Artists: Reno Salvail
[Summer 2009] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. Centre VU Du 10 octobre au 9 novembre 2008
Ciel variable 82 – PUBLIC ART | Exhibition reviews
Authors: James D. Campbell | Artists: Thomas Corriveau
[Summer 2009] Galerie Graff November 13 to December 20, 2008 We are living in a telematically attuned present tense. We are bombarded, even besieged, by endless streaming images and data feeds coming in from all sides, all the time. How we fend off the barrage or negotiate détente with it shapes the condition of our […]
Ciel variable 82 – PUBLIC ART | Exhibition reviews
Authors: René Viau | Artists: Bas Jan Ader
[Summer 2009] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. Dazibao, centre de photographies actuelles, Montréal Du 8 janvier au 21 février 2009 Commissariat : France Choinière
Ciel variable 82 – PUBLIC ART | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Gary Michael Dault | Artists: Roger Ballen
[Summer 2009] OCAD Professional Gallery, Toronto March 5 – May 31, 2009 Everything is decay in Roger Ballen’s photographs: floors, walls, toothless mouths, and lank, rancid hair. Their only “beauty” (as we warily call it) – purloined from painterly, graffiti-wired photographs of the past (Siskind, Brassai, etc.) – is inventively and mercilessly imposed, in the […]
Ciel variable 82 – PUBLIC ART | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Sylvain Campeau | Artists: Carlos & Jason Sanchez
[Summer 2009] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. Maison des arts de Laval Du 27 septembre au 24 novembre 2008 Commissaire : Madeleine Therrien
Ciel variable 82 – PUBLIC ART | Exhibition reviews
Authors: John K. Grande | Artists: Paul-Antoine Pichard
[Summer 2009] Galerie d’art du Centre Culturel Université de Sherbrooke January 12 to February 22, 2009 Previously exhibited at Cirque du Soleil’s TOHU Espace SSQ, Paul-Antoine Pichard’s photographs of people who live amid trash, in the scarred landscapes that they are a part of, reveal scarred, aged, disfigured victims of the conditions imposed on them […]
Ciel variable 82 – PUBLIC ART | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Vincent Bonin | Artists: Silvia Kolbowski
[Summer 2009] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. Galerie Leonard et Bina Ellen, Montréal 30 janvier au 7 mars 2009
Ciel variable 82 – PUBLIC ART | Interviews
Authors: Gaëlle Morel, Jacques Doyon
[Summer 2009] Gaëlle Morel, guest curator for Le Mois de la Photo à Montréal 2009, is a member of the board of directors of the Société française de photographie and of the editorial committee of Études photographiques. She has published Le photoreportage d’auteur. L’institution culturelle de la photographie en France depuis les années 1970 (Paris: […]
[Fall 2009 – Winter 2010] Taken as a whole, what do the images that make up a magazine say? What do their format and positioning reveal? Artists appropriate, divert, or exaggerate the content and layout of existing magazines, seeking to make manifest how the image’s share of the page is structured and tease out […]
Ciel variable 83 - MEDIUM : MAGAZINES | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon | Artists: Christian Boltanski, Hans-Peter Feldmann, Michael Snow, Ron Terada
[Fall 2009] by Jacques Doyon What do the images in a magazine say? What is revealed by the reiteration of certain types of images – as well as their format, positioning, and grouping? Photographs are central to the definition of magazines, often equal in importance to textual content. For the image, the magazine goes beyond […]
Ciel variable 83 - MEDIUM : MAGAZINES | Portfolios
Artists: Hans-Peter Feldmann
[Fall 2009] profil without words (2000), by Hans-Peter Feldmann, is a replica of a news magazine from which the text has been removed so that only the photographs remain, in their original sequence and positioning on the pages. Making the images talk for themselves, this project reveals the visual formatting of current affairs produced by […]
Ciel variable 83 - MEDIUM : MAGAZINES | Portfolios
Authors: Anne Bénichou | Artists: Christian Boltanski
[Fall 2009] Signal (2004), by Christian Boltanski, is a series of colour plates taken from the magazine Signal, a propaganda organ of the Nazi regime issued bimonthly from April 1940 to March 1945 with a print run of 2.5 million copies. Excerpted from the original page sequences, these plates juxtapose portrayals of war and culture that […]
Ciel variable 83 - MEDIUM : MAGAZINES | Portfolios
Authors: Martha Langford | Artists: Michael Snow
[Fall 2009] Repeat Offender (1986), by Michael Snow, is a reprint, inverted and in black and white, of a Penthouse portfolio. First published in the now-defunct Toronto photography magazine Photo Communique, this project was produced upon invitation of Elke Town for an issue with the themes of mass mediation and appropriation. In the context of […]
Ciel variable 83 - MEDIUM : MAGAZINES | Portfolios
Authors: Adam Carr | Artists: Ron Terada
[Fall 2009] Defile (2003), by Ron Terada, is a single-issue artist’s magazine that deals with advertising as an intrinsic component of the art world: the magazine is composed exclusively of ads. Produced by Art Metropole and YYZ Books, this project featured the main art magazines from Canada and other countries in exchange for the publication […]
Ciel variable 83 - MEDIUM : MAGAZINES | Essays
Authors: Zoë Tousignant
[Fall 2009] What images does the expression “photographic modernism in Canada” call to mind? If you are conversant with early-twentieth-century Canadian photography, the pictures of John Vanderpant, the Dutch-born Vancouver-based photographer who was the subject of an exhibition presented at the National Gallery of Canada in 1976, will likely be conjured. The photographic production of […]
Ciel variable 83 - MEDIUM : MAGAZINES | Essays
Authors: Maxime Coulombe | Artists: Joachim Koester
[Fall 2009] Joachim Koester photographs, and sometimes films, invisible events. Since the mid-1990s, he has sought out places that history seems to have touched, then deserted, and finally left to fade away. He sees himself as an archaeologist of the intangible, and thus he asks a question both beautiful and disturbing: Once an event is […]
Ciel variable 83 - MEDIUM : MAGAZINES | Exhibition reviews
Authors: James D. Campbell | Artists: Manon De Pauw
[Fall 2009] Galerie de l’UQAM, Montreal February 27 to March 28, 2009 Manon De Pauw practices a corporeal poetics as inventive and involute in its physical articulation as it is varied and inviting in its philosophical approach. Her manner of thinking the body – the “universal thing” – sheds light on the meaning of corporeality […]
Ciel variable 83 - MEDIUM : MAGAZINES | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Cyril Thomas | Artists: Harun Farocki, Rodney Graham
[Fall 2009] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. Jeu de Paume, Paris Du 7 avril au 7 juin 2009
Ciel variable 83 - MEDIUM : MAGAZINES | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Emily Falvey | Artists: Tony Fouhse
[Fall 2009] iPs Gallery Montreal June 6 to 27, 2009 Crack cocaine is the classic drug of addiction nightmares: it gets you high for five or ten minutes, and then haunts you for the rest of your life. The most addictive form of any drug, crack turns most of its users into dependents, the majority […]
Ciel variable 83 - MEDIUM : MAGAZINES | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Sylvain Campeau | Artists: Thomas Kneubühler
[Fall 2009] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. Projex-Mtl Galerie, Montréal Du 30 avril au 20 juin 2009
Ciel variable 83 - MEDIUM : MAGAZINES | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Jean-François Bélisle | Artists: Atta Kim, Fiona Tan, Mark Lewis
[Fall 2009] June 7 to November 22, 2009 The constellation of temporary exhibitions, national representations, and thematic exhibitions that take over Venice for the first week of June every other year is usually a grand affair that defies any type of human scale. Surprisingly, that was largely untrue this year. Perhaps as a side effect […]
Ciel variable 83 - MEDIUM : MAGAZINES | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Michèle Cohen Hadria | Artists: Jamshed Kholikov, Paolo William Tamburella, Taysir Batniji
[Fall 2009] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. Les petites nations Du 7 juin au 22 novembre 2009
Ciel variable 83 - MEDIUM : MAGAZINES | Exhibition reviews
Authors: John K. Grande | Artists: Scott McFarland
[Fall 2009] Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography at the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa April 11 to September 13, 2009 Given his avid interest in gardening, west coast photographer Scott McFarland addresses the landscape with his photographs. Is he acutely aware of the history of landscape in art? The thirty-six works on view in this […]
Ciel variable 83 - MEDIUM : MAGAZINES | Exhibition reviews
Authors: René Viau | Artists: John Massey, Roman Signer
[Automne 2009] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. VOX, centre de l’image contemporaine, Cinémathèque québécoise, Montréal Du 6 mars au 30 mai 2009
Ciel variable 83 - MEDIUM : MAGAZINES | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Philippe Guillaume | Artists: Sylvie Readman
[Fall 2009] Occurrence, Espace d’Art, and d’Essai Contemporain, Montreal May 14 to June 13, 2009 Sylvie Readman traveled to Argentina to create the core elements for her latest project, S’absenter (2009), exhibited recently at Espace Occurrence in Montreal. The refined and masterful seven photographs and three videos that form this project invite the viewer into […]
Ciel variable 83 - MEDIUM : MAGAZINES | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Sylvain Campeau | Artists: Bertrand Carrière, Serge Clément
[Fall 2009] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. Galerie Simon Blais, Montréal Du 10 juin au 1er août 2009
Ciel variable 83 - MEDIUM : MAGAZINES | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Corina Ilea | Artists: Chantal Gervais, Cindy Stelmackowich, Sarah Sudhoff
[Fall 2009] In Plain Sight Gallery, Montreal April 18 to May 23, 2009 The Rx exhibition, curated by Penny Cousineau-Levine and Zoe Casino at the In Plain Sight Gallery in Montreal, explores the inherent conflicts aroused by the intrusions of medical devices and representations into the construction of identity. The presupposed neutrality and innocence of […]
Ciel variable 83 - MEDIUM : MAGAZINES | Book Reviews
Authors: Anne-Marie St-Jean Aubre
[Fall 2009] You can read the bilingual article by switching over to the French version of this page : CV83 – Ouvrages reçus. By Anne Marie St-Jean Aubre Reviewed books: Martin Désilets, Le grand voyage, Longueuil, Plein sud, 2007, 87 p., ill. coul. Texte bilingue (français et anglais). Nicholas Pye & Sheila Pye, Toronto: Artcore/Fabrice […]
Ciel variable 83 - MEDIUM : MAGAZINES | Interviews
Authors: John K. Grande | Artists: Robert Polidori
[Fall 2009] Robert Polidori’s photographies evoke a sense of tragedy, or of history – but, above all, of place. The analytical quality of his images is combined with the an- cient and contemporary, yet always topi- cal selection of places he works in, which have resulted in numerous popular books, including New Orleans after the […]
[Spring 2010] Portraits convey individualities, but they also express common conditions. Facial features, pose, clothing, and immediate environment contribute to a representation of self, but they also bring us closer to others. These images, like the photographers’ trajectories, portray uniqueness at the crossroads where cultures mix. EDITORIAL PORTFOLIOS FOCUS EXHIBITONS READINGS VOICES […]
Ciel variable 84 – INHABITED | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon
[Spring 2010] by Jacques Doyon This issue presents portraits of people from all walks of life, most of them photographed in their interiors. There are also views of private places filled with things – décor, furniture – that testify to a presence. It is possible to think that individuality, self-representation, is manifested in a person’s […]
Ciel variable 84 – INHABITED | Portfolios
Authors: Jacques Doyon | Artists: Gabor Szilasi
[Spring 2010] Over the years, Gabor Szilasi has assembled a remarkable portrait of Quebecers as a community and of the Montreal urban landscape that earned him the Prix Borduas in 2009. Perhaps it took a com- pletely new eye to tease into visibility the multiple fibres woven into Quebec society. Szilasi’s portraits form a major […]
Ciel variable 84 – INHABITED | Portfolios
Authors: Gary Michael Dault | Artists: Olga Chagaoutdinova
[Spring 2010] A résident of Canada for the last ten years, Olga Chagaoutdinova has remained interested in the evolution of the Russian society, where she experienced the early effects of perestroika. She returned to Russia to take photographs of people and interiors that juxtapose artefacts of traditional Soviet life with heterogeneous aspects of Western consumer […]
Ciel variable 84 – INHABITED | Portfolios
Authors: Lei Ping | Artists: Hu Yang
[Spring 2010] Here are selections from a remarkable documentary work produced by Hu Yang, a Shanghai photographer who recently moved to Toronto. Shanghai Living comprises some five hundred portraits of Shanghai residents photographed in their own interiors, along with short excerpts from interviews in which each describes his or her way of life, values, and […]
Ciel variable 84 – INHABITED | Essays
Authors: John K. Grande | Artists: Andreas Gursky
[Spring 2010] by John K. Grande Andréas Gursky’s incredible take on the contemporary has much to do with the ascent of photography in the contemporary art world. And yet Gursky, as much as any photographier, is to be credited for raising that profile, thanks to his monumental photographic images. It is therefore ironic that for […]
Ciel variable 84 – INHABITED | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Sylvain Campeau | Artists: Yan Giguère
[Spring 2010] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. Galerie Optica, Montréal Du 12 septembre au 17 octobre 2009
Ciel variable 84 – INHABITED | Exhibition reviews
Authors: James D. Campbell | Artists: Guido Guidi
[Spring 2010] CCA, Montreal September 11, 2009, to January 10, 2010 Nestled within the CCA’s Octagonal Gallery in conceptually elegant fashion, this thematic body of photographic work by the Italian photographer Guido Guidi paid tribute to an architectural masterwork while highlighting his own various strengths and idiosyncrasies as a creative artist preoccupied, for the last […]
Ciel variable 84 – INHABITED | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Nathalie Guimond | Artists: Nicholas Pye, Sheila Pye
[Spring 2010] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. Galerie Art Mûr, Montréal Du 15 août au 12 septembre 2009
Ciel variable 84 – INHABITED | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Judith Parker | Artists: Michael Schreier
[Spring 2010] The Ottawa Art Gallery, Ottawa September 10 to November 15, 2009. Disquieting, painterly, poetic – these words come to mind on viewing Michael Schreier’s series of large-scale grey/blue/purple semi-abstract photographs, Disappearing Numbers (2007-20-09), and Or-Sarua (2009), which portray empty bunker-like interiors quietly resonating with a sense of tragedy. Despite their softened forms and […]
Ciel variable 84 – INHABITED | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Virginie Doré Lemonde | Artists: Jason Dodge, Rob Kovitz
[Spring 2010] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. Jason Dodge et Rob Kovitz Dazibao centre de photographies actuelles, Montréal Du 24 octobre au 28 novembre 2009
Ciel variable 84 – INHABITED | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Anne-Marie St-Jean Aubre | Artists: Gwenaël Bélanger
[Spring 2010] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. Casser l’image Expression, centre d’exposition de Saint-Hyacinthe Du 7 novembre au 20 décembre 2009
Ciel variable 84 – INHABITED | Exhibition reviews
Authors: John K. Grande | Artists: Chris McCaw, Michael Flomen
[Spring 2010] The Rise of Abstraction in Photography Galerie Pangée, Montreal September 15 to October 12, 2009 Culled from a much larger exhibition at Aperture Gallery in New York, curated by Lyle Rexer, author of, among others, How to Look at Outsider Art,1 The Edge of Vision is a very special show that touches on […]
Ciel variable 84 – INHABITED | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Jean-Pierre Vidal | Artists: Matthieu Brouillard
[Spring 2010] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. Centre Sagamie, Alma Du 3 septembre au 9 octobre 2009
Ciel variable 84 – INHABITED | Book Reviews
Authors: Stephen Horne | Artists: Lynne Cohen
[Spring 2010] Lynne Cohen Cover Cherbourg-Octeville : Le point du jour, 2009, 142 pp., col. ills. Bilingual text Cover, recently put out by the French publisher Le Point du Jour, presents the work of Montreal-based photographer Lynne Cohen. Cohen began photographing domestic interiors and has been pursuing a documentary-style description of institutional interior spaces for […]
Ciel variable 84 – INHABITED | Book Reviews
Authors: Anne-Marie St-Jean Aubre
[Printemps 2010] You can read the bilingual article by switching over to the French version of this page : CV97 – Ouvrages à souligner. By Anne Marie St-Jean Aubre Reviewed books: Marie Perrault, Anne Ramsden. La collection et le quotidien, Rimouski, Musée régional de Rimouski, 2007, 55 p., ill. n. et b. et coul. Texte […]
Ciel variable 84 – INHABITED | Interviews
Authors: Johanna Mizgala | Artists: John Massey, Lynne Cohen, Roy Arden
[Spring 2010] Glen Bloom’s interest in contemporary art began during his first year of law school in Edmonton. The building adjoining the law faculty was that of the fine arts faculty; by chance or design, Bloom found that he was spending more time in the latter than the former, and it piqued his interest in […]
[Summer 2010] Bombs opening up craters in streets, training camps that look like urban neighbourhoods, media perceptions of the war in Afghanistan, a look back at the riot as background for an urban renewal project… and images that use representation and fiction to try to convey these realities. EDITORIAL PORTFOLIOS FOCUS EXHIBITIONS VOICES […]
Ciel variable 85 - CONFLICT | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon
[Spring 2010] by Jacques Doyon This issue looks at the representation of conflicts and wars. Whether they are distant battles, terrorist attacks, or riots taking place in the heart of our cities, their communication to the public is often dominated by spectacularization and slanted views. The artists whose works brought together here address situations that […]
Ciel variable 85 - CONFLICT | Portfolios
Artists: Emanuel Licha, Sophie Ristelhueber, Stan Douglas
Bombs opening up craters in streets, training camps that look like urban neighbourhoods, media perceptions of the war in Afghanistan, a look back at the riot as background for an urban renewal project… and images that use representation and fiction to try to convey these realities. SOPHIE RISTELHUEBER Eleven Blowups Poetics of Facts Jacinto Lageira […]
Ciel variable 85 - CONFLICT | Portfolios
Authors: Jacinto Lageira | Artists: Sophie Ristelhueber
May 26, 2016 [originally published in Summer 2010] — In Eleven Blowups, Sophie Ristelhueber uses elements of her own photographs to re-create images of bomb craters produced by the media. In showing the traces of destruction, these images, true and false at once, portray not the specificity of a single story and place but the experience of collapse.
Ciel variable 85 - CONFLICT | Portfolios
Authors: Stephen Horne | Artists: Emanuel Licha
May 24, 2016 [originally published in Summer 2010] — These two works by Emanuel Licha are based on his interest in urban settings re-created for police or military training camps. The intention is to reveal the fully operational role of fiction in the reality of conflicts and in the composition of our portrayals of the foreign.
Ciel variable 85 - CONFLICT | Portfolios
Authors: Amish Morrell | Artists: Allyson Mitchell, Graeme Smith, Louie Palu, Richard Johnson, Stephen Andrews, Suzanne Opton
May 19, 2016 [originally published in Summer 2010] — The theme of the exhibition War at a Distance, presented by the TPW Gallery in Toronto, was media representations of war in the context of debates over the Canadian presence in Afghanistan.
Ciel variable 85 - CONFLICT | Essays, Portfolios
Authors: Karen Henry | Artists: Stan Douglas
May 16, 2016 [originally published in Summer 2010] — The impressive piece of public art addresses the very nature of public space. It is named after the two streets that cross at the north corner of the Woodward’s building, on which the artwork is installed. The image inhabits space like a sculpture, grandly overlooking the public and private courtyards of the new complex in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside.
Ciel variable 85 - CONFLICT | Exhibition reviews
Authors: René Viau | Artists: Gregory Sholette, John Jordan
May 12, 2016 [originally published in French only in Summer 2010] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.