Thematic presentation: Change of Scene
Ciel variable 128 – CHANGE OF SCENE | Portfolios
Authors: Jacques Doyon
Thematic presentation for Ciel variable 128: Change of Scene.
Portfolios
Geoffrey James, Canadian Photographs – Kenneth Hayes, A Weakness for Places
Ciel variable 128 – CHANGE OF SCENE | Portfolios
Authors: Kenneth Hayes | Artists: Geoffrey James
Geoffrey James’s Canadian Photographs offer a paradoxical perspective on the vast country that is Canada. Cities and landscapes appear torn between a not always glorious past and an uncertain future.
Louie Palu, Distant Early Warning – Jill Glessing, The New Battle Lines: Images from the Arctic
Ciel variable 128 – CHANGE OF SCENE | Portfolios
Authors: Jill Glessing | Artists: Louie Palu
Louie Palu has traveled to the Canadian Arctic several times, a part of the country whose strategic importance is well known, yet largely inaccessible to most of us due to its inhospitable nature. From his travels, Palu has created a critical project on the militarization of this territory.
Jinyoung Kim, Here – Gabrielle Sarthou, Uprooted, Taking Root
Ciel variable 128 – CHANGE OF SCENE | Portfolios
Authors: Gabrielle Sarthou | Artists: Jinyoung Kim
Jinyoung Kim’s journey is one of emigration, from South Korea to Canada. Although the places are briefly mentioned, it is the very idea of displacement, and the upheavals associated with such uprooting, that forms the core of his works.
Suzy Lake, Game Theory: Global Gamesmanship – Erin Silver, Queening the Pawn
Ciel variable 127 – SISTERS, FIGHTERS, QUEENS | Portfolios
Authors: Erin Silver | Artists: Suzy Lake
In the series Game Theory: Global Gamesmanship, Suzy Lake presents herself, both as queen and pawn, in a chess game illustrating the power relations of our societies.
Zaynê Akyol, NÛJEN, les combattantes – Claudia Polledri, For “Better and Freer Tomorrows”
Ciel variable 127 – SISTERS, FIGHTERS, QUEENS | Portfolios
Authors: Claudia Polledri | Artists: Zaynê Akyol
A documentary filmmaker known for her works showing the importance of women’s commitment to the war against the Islamic State, Zaynê Akyol also creates the NÛJEN, les combattantes photography series, which reflects women’s experiences and solidarity on the frontline.
Caroline Monnet, Sororité – Caroline Nepton Hotte, Living Here: A Voice for Indigenous Women
Ciel variable 127 – SISTERS, FIGHTERS, QUEENS | Portfolios
Authors: Caroline Nepton-Hotte | Artists: Caroline Monnet
As part of her wide-ranging, shape-shifting practice, Caroline Monnet’s composite and multigenerational portraits highlight the important role of native women in transmitting values in a context of decolonization.
Theme presentation: Sisters, Fighters, Queens
Ciel variable 127 – SISTERS, FIGHTERS, QUEENS | Portfolios
Authors: Jacques Doyon
The works gathered in this thematic dossier tell the story of women’s affirmation and contributions in various contexts: decolonization, resistance to Islamic fundamentalism and the reconsideration of traditional gamesmanship.
Justin Wonnacott, Figureground — Pierre Dessureault, Observing the Theatre of the Streets
Ciel variable 126 – TRAJECTORIES | Portfolios
Authors: Pierre Dessureault | Artists: Justin Wonnacott
[Summer 2024] Observing the Theatre of the Streets by Pierre Dessureault [EXCERPT] Following in the street-photography tradition, Ontario photographer Justin Wonnacott has been scrutinizing life in cities in Canada and elsewhere for more than three decades. The images that he has brought together in Figureground highlight the uniqueness of his approach, which has evolved over […]
Patrick Beaulieu, El Perdido — Julie Martin, On the Road to Nowhere
Ciel variable 126 – TRAJECTORIES | Portfolios
Authors: Julie Martin | Artists: Patrick Beaulieu
[Summer 2024] On the Road to Nowhere by Julie Martin [EXCERPT] What story can photographs tell? How can a performance be reconstructed? How can travel be recounted with still images? These questions traverse the histories of performance and of photography, and are at the core of the work of the artist Patrick Beaulieu, who updates […]
Francis Alÿs, Children’s Games — Stephen Horne, Outside/Elsewhere
Ciel variable 126 – TRAJECTORIES | Portfolios
Authors: Stephen Horne | Artists: Francis Alÿs
[Summer 2024] Outside/Elsewhere by Stephen Horne There is no need to understand it, only to contemplate it, to be struck with wonder and laugh with the universal laugh of creation. – Octavio Paz In his video series Children’s Games (1999–ongoing), the Belgian-Mexican artist Francis Alÿs documents the creation of place by children – a space […]
Trajectories
[Summer 2024] PORTFOLIOS A trajectory involves movement and, implicitly, evolution or even advance ment (read, progress). It is the contrary of a point, which represents immobility, stopping, the status quo. As we move from point A to point B, we change position, context, point of view. The trajectories followed by the three artists in our […]
Bertrand Carrière, Autoroutes 10-20-55 — Michel Hardy-Vallée, Landscape and Automobile
Ciel variable 125 – AGGLOMERATIONS | Portfolios
Authors: Michel Hardy-Vallée | Artists: Bertrand Carrière
[Winter 2024] Landscape and Automobile By Michel Hardy-Vallée [Excerpt] Recently, driving home from Quebec City, I stopped for hot dogs in Neuville. The setting wasn’t elegant: a gas station with a food concession, surrounded by a lot with vague edges. I wanted something shapeless and soft after spending a full day with intellectually and aesthetically […]
Suzanne Lafont, Nouvelles espèces de compagnie — Julie Martin, Urban Intrusion
Ciel variable 125 – AGGLOMERATIONS | Portfolios
Authors: Julie Martin
[Winter 2024] Urban Intrusion By Julie Martin [Excerpt] Here, petals in subtle variations of red. There, the intricately traced veins of a leaf. Elsewhere, delicate yellow stamens; and farther on, a clean green sepal and half-open cottony buds. In her series Nouvelles espèces de compagnie, produced in 2017 for a commission from the city of […]
Éric Tabuchi / Nelly Monnier, Exposer l’ARN — Luce Lebart, Photographic Tour of France
Ciel variable 125 – AGGLOMERATIONS | Portfolios
Authors: Luce Lebart | Artists: Éric Tabuchi, Nelly Monnier
[Winter 2024] Photographic Tour of France By Luce Lebart [Excerpt] Soleil Gris, Éric Tabuchi and Nelly Monnier’s exhibition in Arles,1 opened under a blazing sun in the Ground Control industrial site on the edge of the historic city in the Bouches-du-Rhône department. This big hangar, to which attendees to Rencontres d’Arles photography festival rarely return […]
Agglomerations
Ciel variable 125 – AGGLOMERATIONS | Portfolios
Artists: Bertrand Carrière, Éric Tabuchi, Nelly Monnier, Suzanne Lafont
[Winter 2024] Cities are born from clusters of structures that provide shelter for human life and activities. Through them flow grids of thoroughfares that form patterns of movement and exchange. That’s what an urban agglomeration is: a dense knot, large or small, placed at a certain point in a rhizomatic lattice that runs through an […]
Adad Hannah, Expositions récentes — Posing Bodies and Works, Sylvain Campeau
Ciel variable 124 – SEEING THROUGH IMAGES | Portfolios
Authors: Sylvain Campeau | Artists: Adad Hannah
[Fall 2023] Posing Bodies and Works Sylvain Campeau [Excerpt] At Pierre-François Ouellette art contemporain,1 Adad Hannah recently presented a panorama combining new works, in the first gallery, with others still underway, in the second gallery. Hence the logic of grouping them under the title Recent Exposures. There is in allusion here to one of Hannah’s […]
Thomas Demand, Le bégaiement de l’histoire — Second Seeing, Stephen Horne
Ciel variable 124 – SEEING THROUGH IMAGES | Portfolios
Authors: Stephen Horne | Artists: Thomas Demand
[Fall 2023] Second Seeing Stephen Horne [Excerpt] I must be getting mixed, confusing here and there, now and then, just as I confused them then, the here of then, the1then of there. — Samuel Beckett What is this “confusion” of which the playwright Beckett speaks? He wrote this some seventy years ago, before electronic media […]
Nicolas Baier, Vases communicants — An Almost Spontaneous Appearance of the Machine in the World, Jacques Doyon
Ciel variable 124 – SEEING THROUGH IMAGES | Portfolios
Authors: Jacques Doyon | Artists: Nicolas Baier
[Fall 2023] [Excerpt] An Almost Spontaneous Appearance of the Machine in the World An interview by Jacques Doyon On the occasion of Nicolas Baier’s major exhibition held in Montreal in early 2023,1 we sat down with him to talk about its main themes. Jacques Doyon: It seems appropriate to start with the video titled Vases […]
Seeing Through Images
Ciel variable 124 – SEEING THROUGH IMAGES | Portfolios
Artists: Adad Hannah, Nicolas Baier, Thomas Demand
[Fall 2023] These are images that disrupt, catch our attention, and thus intensify our gaze. What they show us is clear and precise, and yet there is something we can’t place, sometimes almost imperceptible, that encourages us to look more closely and ask more questions about the context of image production. So, what we are […]
Michèle Pearson Clarke, The Animal Seems to Be Moving – Dayna McLeod, Queer Black Masculinities: Middle-aged Boyhood
Ciel variable 123 – THE POWER OF INTIMACY | Portfolios
Authors: Dayna McLeod | Artists: Michèle Pearson Clarke
[Summer 2023] Queer Black Masculinities: Middle-aged Boyhood By Dayna McLeod [Excerpt] An exercise in confronting shyness, shame, and fear about singing, Quantum Choir1 is a moving enactment of queer kinship and vulnerability in which Michèle Pearson Clarke invites three other queer masculine people with no singing experience to learn to sing with her and ultimately […]
Raymonde April, Traversée — Pierre Dessureault, Snapshots of Memory
Ciel variable 123 – THE POWER OF INTIMACY | Portfolios
Authors: Pierre Dessureault | Artists: Raymonde April
[Summer 2023] Snapshots of Memory By Pierre Dessureault [Excerpt] “During the spring and summer, I make a lot of photographs. My contact sheets are filled with outdoor scenes, with landscapes and, most of all, with people in landscapes. . . . Then, before fall sets in, I go back home. I pore over my contact […]
Evergon, Theatres of the Intimate — Nathalie Côté, The Liberated Gaze
Ciel variable 123 – THE POWER OF INTIMACY | Portfolios
Authors: Nathalie Côté | Artists: Evergon
[Summer 2023] The Liberated Gaze By Nathalie Côté [Excerpt] The retrospective dedicated to the artist Evergon by the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec1 provided an overview of his contribution to photography over fifty years of creation and more than two hundred images. His virtuosity is fascinating, and the issues that he has addressed over […]
The Power of Intimacy
Ciel variable 123 – THE POWER OF INTIMACY | Portfolios
Artists: Evergon, Michèle Pearson Clarke, Raymonde April
[Summer 2023] The intimate is where we first experiment and affirm our own identity – an existential issue that plays out essentially between self and self. At the same time, such identification can occur only in interrelation with people with whom one has strong affinities. Identity is also a relationship with the other: what we […]
Emmanuelle Léonard, Black Out : Les livreurs / The Deliverers — Gabrielle Sarthou, Those Who Wait for Us
Ciel variable 122 – NIGHT ROUNDS | Portfolios
Authors: Gabrielle Sarthou | Artists: Emmanuelle Léonard
[Winter 2023] Those Who Wait for Us By Gabrielle Sarthou [Excerpt] Going from place to place in the city. The sidewalk unfurls under our feet. The stores scroll by, one after another. Sometimes, we no longer notice the neon signs or the people we pass. The faces fade. We classify, we consider, then we forget. […]
Santiago Tamayo Soler, Neón — Edward Pérez-González, Tracing to Build: Concealing to Reveal
Ciel variable 122 – NIGHT ROUNDS | Portfolios
Authors: Edward Pérez-González | Artists: Santiago Tamayo Soler
[Winter 2023] By Edward Pérez-González. Tracing means running a pencil over a line that is already drawn. Inking it again to make it thicker; correcting it, putting it back on its feet, in a way…
Éliane Excoffier, Nightlife au mont Pinacle — Yannick Marcoux, Living Creatures Found in the Night
Ciel variable 122 – NIGHT ROUNDS | Portfolios
Authors: Yannick Marcoux | Artists: Éliane Excoffier
[Winter 2023] By Yannick Marcoux. The forest doesn’t belong to us. We have chopped down its trees, hunted its animals, and polluted its rivers, but one aspect of its intrinsic forces still evades us. Like oceans, forests, though absolutely concrete, inhabited, and alive, sometimes seem intangible…
Night Rounds
Ciel variable 122 – NIGHT ROUNDS | Portfolios
Artists: Éliane Excoffier, Emmanuelle Léonard
[Winter 2023] No matter what the adage says, all cats are not grey in the dark. Night-time brings out a throng of personalities and countless activities. In nature, that’s when the wild animals finally take over. ..
Pierre Blache, L’insolence des villes — Stay Home; Take a Walk, Michel Hardy-Vallée
Ciel variable 121 – WANDERINGS | Portfolios
Authors: Michel Hardy-Vallée | Artists: Pierre Blache
[Fall 2022] Stay Home; Take a Walk By Michel Hardy-Vallée [Excerpt] My memory of the early months of the pandemic remains blurry, but these two contradictory, yet simultaneous, injunctions issued at the beginning of lockdown have suddenly popped up in my mind. These imperatives, apparently banal – even apparently insignificant – were to change our […]
Chun Hua Catherine Dong, I Have Been There – New York — Didier Morelli, To Be There, or To Have Been There
Ciel variable 121 – WANDERINGS | Portfolios
Authors: Didier Morelli
[Fall 2022] To Be There, or To Have Been There By Didier Morelli [Extract] Here I want to add that the architecture does not solely permit such levels of comfort and discomfort, but also the body comportment – the body movements of men and women, whites, blacks, or otherwise racialized people – in these spaces […]