Exhibition Reviews

Omer Fast, Zach Blas, Susan Schuppli — Nicolas Mavrikakis

Ciel variable 122 – NIGHT ROUNDS | Exhibition Reviews
Authors: Nicolas Mavrikakis | Artists: Omer Fast

[Winter 2023] By Nicolas Mavrikakis Campus für Demokratie, Berlin Biennale für zeitgenössische Kunst 11.06.2022 — 18.09.2022 [Excerpt] The idea is aptly striking. The section of the 12th Berlin Biennale addressing issues about surveillance – its title is Still Present! – and dealing with its weighty heritages from modernity was set in the gigantic former headquarters […]

Ken Lum, Death and Furniture — Earl Miller

Ciel variable 122 – NIGHT ROUNDS | Exhibition Reviews
Authors: Earl Miller | Artists: Ken Lum

[Winter 2023] By Earl Miller Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto 25.06.2022 — 02.01.2023 [Excerpt] The forty-year survey of Ken Lum’s work, Death and Furniture, marking his receipt of the 2019 Gershon Iskowitz Prize, is timely. Like other members of the Vancouver School, Lum has had a grounding in first-generation post-modernism and Marxism. However, he is […]

Manon Labrecque, des [ré] animations — Sylvain Campeau

Ciel variable 122 – NIGHT ROUNDS | Exhibition Reviews
Authors: Sylvain Campeau | Artists: Manon Labrecque

[Winter 2023] Sylvain Campeau Maison des arts de Laval 01.05.2022 — 03.07.2022 [Excerpt] For some ten years, as foretold in her previous works, Manon Labrecque has been producing unique visual and animation devices, including ones in which the images apparently move, forming an utterly original cinégénie (a wonderful term coined by Dominique Païni). She did […]

Alexander Henderson, Art and Nature — Sophie Bertrand

Ciel variable 122 – NIGHT ROUNDS | Exhibition Reviews
Authors: Sophie Bertrand | Artists: Alexander Henderson

[Winter 2023] Sophie Bertrand McCord Museum 10.06.2022 – 16.04.2023 [Excerpt] In 2021, the McCord Museum celebrated its one-hundredth anniversary against the backdrop of COVID-19. As a result of the forced closure of museums due to the pandemic, the retrospective exhibition of photographs by Alexander Henderson – who had fallen into obscurity for more than a […]

Michelle Bui, Mutable Materialism — Didier Morelli

Ciel variable 122 – NIGHT ROUNDS | Exhibition Reviews
Authors: Didier Morelli | Artists: Michelle Bui

[Winter 2023] By Didier Morelli Contemporary Art Gallery and Yaletown-Roundhouse Station, Vancouver 1.04.2022 — 28.08.2022 [Excerpt] On a rainy Vancouver day, when most of the city’s vibrant colour is sapped and replaced by greyscale, the downtown core is especially downcast. Postmodern steel-and-glass skyscrapers appear starved for light, desperately reaching out toward cloud-filled skies. As I […]

Judith Joy Ross, Photographies 1978–2015 — Michèle Cohen Hadria

Ciel variable 122 – NIGHT ROUNDS | Exhibition Reviews
Authors: Michèle Cohen Hadria | Artists: Judith Joy Ross

[Winter 2023] By Michèle Cohen Hadria LE BAL, Paris 16.03.2022 — 18.09.2022 [Excerpt] Portraiture is not my favourite photographic genre. However, when I visited the first exhibition of Judith Joy Ross’s work in France, I felt that it opened a world to me – one built of respect for and a subtle approach to human […]

Hiwa K, Do you remember what you are burning? — Jill Glessing

Ciel variable 122 – NIGHT ROUNDS | Exhibition Reviews
Authors: Jill Glessing | Artists: Hiwa K

[Winter 2023] By Jill Glessing The Power Plant, Toronto 20.05.2022 — 28.08.2022 [Excerpt] Hiwa K manages an uneasy balance among being an artist, an activist, a teacher, a philosopher, a musician, and, since his recent return to Iraq, a farmer. Resistant to the professional and academic boxes that most artists and intellectuals inhabit (he calls […]

Sophie Guignard — Indigenous Forced Displacement

Ciel variable 122 – NIGHT ROUNDS | Exhibition Reviews
Authors: Sophie Guignard

[Winter 2023] By Sophie Guignard Galerie FOFA, Montréal 26.06.2022 — 20.08.2022 [Excerpt] During summer 2022, Concordia University’s Faculty of Fine Arts Gallery turned outward to the street. Ten large and arresting black-and-white portraits were displayed in the gallery’s windows. What stood out at first glance was the diversity of people portrayed. It was obvious, given […]

Graciela Iturbide, Heliotropo 37 — Stephen Horne

Ciel variable 121 – WANDERINGS | Exhibition Reviews
Authors: Stephen Horne

[Fall 2022] By Stephen Horne Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain, Paris 12.02.2022 — 29.05.2022 [Excerpt] The exhibition takes its title, Heliotropo 37, from the street address of the artist’s studio in Mexico City. The artist is Graciela Iturbide, and the studio transposed to the Fondation Cartier in Paris was created by Mauricio Rocha, who also […]

Sébastien Michaud, Les jardiniers de la forêt — Mathieu Teasdale

Ciel variable 121 – WANDERINGS | Exhibition Reviews
Artists: Sébastien Michaud

[Fall 2022] By Mathieu Teasdale Maison de la culture de Pointe-aux-Trembles, Montréal 19.03.2022 — 15.05.2022 [Excerpt] Presented at the Maison de la culture de Pointe-aux-Trembles, Sébastien Michaud’s exhibition Les jardiniers de la forêt walks the line between photographic documentary and realist narrative installation. Both of these positions, carefully articulated, help to contextualize the workers in […]

Clara Gutsche, Portraits d’enfants. Children — Jérôme Delgado

Ciel variable 121 – WANDERINGS | Critiques d'expositions, Exhibition Reviews
Authors: Jérôme Delgado | Artists: Clara Gutsche

[Fall 2022] By Jérôme Delgado Optica, un centre d’art contemporain, Montréal 9.04.2022 — 11.06.2022 [Excerpt] Gazing at children, as Clara Gutsche has done – and still does – is to lean into thresholds that open to imminent changes. It’s to examine what makes the familiar different or, on the contrary, what familiarity may arise from […]

Steve Giasson, Steve Giasson as Others / Steve Giasson comme les autres — Emmanuelle Choquette

Ciel variable 121 – WANDERINGS | Exhibition Reviews
Authors: Emmanuelle Choquette | Artists: Steve Giasson

[Fall 2022] By Emmanuelle Choquette Carleton University Art Gallery, Ottawa 15.02.2022 — 3.04.2022 [Excerpt] When we enter Steve Giasson as Others/ Steve Giasson comme les autres, it’s as if we’re entering a portrait gallery in a museum: the works are hung in a single line at eye level – a succession of photographs of similar […]

Nicolas Baier, Procession — Edward Pérez-González

Ciel variable 121 – WANDERINGS | Exhibition Reviews
Authors: Edward Pérez-González | Artists: Nicolas Baier

[Fall 2022] By Edward Pérez-González Manif d’art 10, Québec 19.02.2022 — 24.04.2022 [Excerpt] A zoom in on a dense and intensely green forest. A slow, continuous move- ment suggests an infinitely dilated time and produces a growing tension as details are highlighted. A slight wind brings the forest out of its lethargy, making leaves and […]

Lawrence Abu Hamdan, 45th Parallel — Jill Glessing

Ciel variable 121 – WANDERINGS | Exhibition Reviews
Authors: Jill Glessing | Artists: Lawrence Abu Hamdan

[Fall 2022] By Jill Glessing Mercer Union, Toronto 26.03.2022 — 4.06.2022 [Excerpt] Territorial borders function as economic technologies, designed to protect regional resources and wealth. As borders become increasingly porous for transferring capital and goods thanks to globalized free trade agreements, they correspondingly tighten against human migration. The dissolution of the Berlin Wall in 1989 […]

JJ Levine, Queer Photographs — Didier Morelli

Ciel variable 121 – WANDERINGS | Exhibition Reviews
Authors: Didier Morelli | Artists: JJ Levine

[Fall 2022] By Didier Morelli McCord Museum, Montreal 18.02.2022 — 18.09.2022 [Excerpt] Entering JJ Levine’s most recent solo exhibition at the McCord Museum, viewers are greeted with a wall-sized vinyl photograph titled Boyfriends in Bed (2011). In this image from the ongoing series Queer Portraits, two romantic partners lie on a purple bedcover with red […]

A Trillion Sunsets. A Century of Image Overload — Sylvain Campeau

Ciel variable 121 – WANDERINGS | Exhibition Reviews
Authors: Sylvain Campeau

[Fall 2022] By Sylvain Campeau International Center of Photography, New York 28.01.2022 — 2.05.2022 [Excerpt] With its very title, A Trillion Sunsets: A Century of Image Overload announces its subject and its attitude. Looking at the publicity for the show, we would note that this is a theme very much of our times – maybe […]

Sarah Moon, At the Still Point — Ariane Noël de Tilly

Ciel variable 120 - FIGURES OF AFFIRMATION | Exhibition Reviews
Authors: Ariane Noël de Tilly | Artists: Sarah Moon

[Summer 2022] By Ariane Noël de Tilly Fotografiska, New York 15.10.2021— 6.02.2022 [Excerpt] It was La robe à pois (1996), a large-format photograph placed at the entrance to the exhibition, that invited visitors to immerse themselves in the enigmatic universe, sometimes in colour but usually in black and white, of French photographer Sarah Moon. In […]

Myriam Yates, Parcs. Playgrounds — Josianne Poirier

Ciel variable 120 - FIGURES OF AFFIRMATION | Exhibition Reviews
Authors: Josianne Poirier | Artists: Myriam Yates

[Summer 2022] By Josianne Poirier Optica, Montréal 6.11.2021 — 18.12.2021 [Excerpt] For the series of photographs and videos comprising the exhibition Parcs. Playgrounds, Myriam Yates aimed her camera at deserted playgrounds. The facilities that she documented in different New York neighbourhoods in 2018 nevertheless bear the traces of past use and suggest bodies in gymnastic […]

Sorel Cohen, Métaphores conceptuelles — Johanne Sloan

Ciel variable 120 - FIGURES OF AFFIRMATION | Exhibition Reviews
Authors: Johanne Sloan | Artists: Sorel Cohen

[Summer 2022] By Johanne Sloan VOX – Centre de l’image contemporaine, Montréal 18.11.2021 — 19.02.2022 [Excerpt] The wit, energy, and experimental spirit of Sorel Cohen’s work is as inspiring as ever in an exhibition at VOX, which brings together selected pieces from the 1970s to the 2000s. Cohen’s art practice flourished at the intersection of […]

Emmanuel Galland, « Mes Dates / Close Friends » — Sophie Bertrand

Ciel variable 120 - FIGURES OF AFFIRMATION | Exhibition Reviews
Authors: Sophie Bertrand | Artists: Emmanuel Galland

[Summer 2022] By Sophie Bertrand HANGAR 7826, Montréal 6.11.2021 — 28.11.2021 [Excerpt] Max, Brad, Tyler, John, Diego, Erik. These disembodied names, crowded together on the walls of the small gallery HANGAR 7826, wordlessly welcome us to the most recent exhibition by Emmanuel Galland, « Mes Dates / Close Friends ». At first glance, the grouping […]

Taysir Batniji, Quelques bribes arrachées au vide qui se creuse — Érika Nimis

Ciel variable 120 - FIGURES OF AFFIRMATION | Exhibition Reviews
Authors: Erika Nimis | Artists: Taysir Batniji

[Summer 2022] By Érika Nimis MAC VAL Musée d’art contemporain du Val-de-Marne, Vitry-sur-Seine 6.06.2021 — 9.01.2022 [Excerpt] The Musée d’art contemporain du Val-de-Marne devoted a solo exhibition to Taysir Batniji, retracing with rare coherence more than twenty-five years of his art career in some fifty works: paintings, drawings, photographs, videos, installations, performances. Born in Gaza […]

Sanaz Sohrabi, Hiding in Plain Sight: Archives of Oil — Emmanuelle Choquette

Ciel variable 120 - FIGURES OF AFFIRMATION | Exhibition Reviews
Authors: Emmanuelle Choquette | Artists: Sanaz Sohrabi

[Summer 2022] By Emmanuelle Choquette Centre d’art et de diffusion Clark, Montréal 28.10.2021 — 27.11.2021 [Excerpt] In her practice, Sanaz Sohrabi probes the political structure, the trajectory, and the circulation of the image. She addresses these issues through the prism of the archive as site of representation and as tool of construction of dominant narratives. […]

Michel Boulanger, Dans ces rangs de lignes pressées — Daniel Roy

Ciel variable 120 - FIGURES OF AFFIRMATION | Exhibition Reviews
Authors: Daniel Roy | Artists: Michel Boulanger

[Summer 2022] By Daniel Roy Occurrence, espace d’art et d’essai contemporains, Montréal 14.01.2022 — 19.02.2022 [Excerpt] Through his art practice, Michel Boulanger has developed a specific interest in industrial technologies and how they transform the agrarian landscape. His most recent animation video, Dans ces rangs de lignes pressées, presented at Occurrence, portrays the anxieties and […]

Luther Konadu, Portraiture en gestuelles — Nicolas Mavrikakis

Ciel variable 120 - FIGURES OF AFFIRMATION | Exhibition Reviews
Authors: Nicolas Mavrikakis | Artists: Luther Konadu

[Summer 2022] By Nicolas Mavrikakis SBC galerie d’art contemporain, Montréal 4.11.2021 — 18.12.2021 [Excerpt] Whatever one might do or say, many people continue to see photography as having an aura of truth. Its authoritative status with regard to the potential to capture reality, a historical construction inherited from the nineteenth century, is a persistent cliché. […]

Martin Désilets — Yannick Marcoux

Ciel variable 119 - AGAINST NATURE | Exhibition Reviews
Authors: Yannick Marcoux | Artists: Martin Désilets

[Winter 2022] Les tableaux réunis Musée d’art de Joliette 19.06.2021— 6.09.2021 By Yannick Marcoux [Excerpt] In a poem in his L’art poétique, Nicolas Boileau made a suggestion that has become famous: “Put your work twenty times on the anvil.” It seems that twenty times is not enough for the artist Martin Désilets, who, since 2017, […]

Carlos Ferrand Zavala — Alexis Desgagnés

Ciel variable 119 - AGAINST NATURE | Exhibition Reviews
Authors: Alexis Desgagnés | Artists: Carlos Ferrand Zavala

[Winter 2022] SBC, galerie d’art contemporain, Montréal 4.09.2021 — 23.10.2021 By Alexis Desgagnés [Excerpt] Peruvian-born Montreal artist Carlos Ferrand Zavala, recipient of the Bourse de carrière Michel-Brault from the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec in 2015, is known mainly as a director, screenwriter, and cinematographer. Among his latest films are 13, un […]

Catherine Bodmer — Emmanuelle Choquette

Ciel variable 119 - AGAINST NATURE | Exhibition Reviews
Authors: Emmanuelle Choquette | Artists: Catherine Bodmer

[Winter 2022] Galerie B-312, Montréal 7.05.2021 — 23.06.2021 By Emmanuelle Choquette [Excerpt] The exhibition Synonymes is an outcome of Catherine Bodmer’s long-term research conducted during residencies in Mexico City between 2010 and 2018. Pairing photography and text, the body of work on display in Galerie B-312’s two exhibition spaces addresses Bodmer’s relationship, developed over time, […]

Françoise Sullivan — Didier Morelli

Ciel variable 119 - AGAINST NATURE | Exhibition Reviews
Authors: Didier Morelli | Artists: Françoise Sullivan

[Winter 2022] Galerie de l’UQAM, Montreal 14.05.2021 — 16.07.2021 By Didier Morelli [Excerpt] Even in her nineties, the seminal Quebec interdisciplinary artist Françoise Sullivan never ceases to inspire. Françoise Sullivan: The 1970s, organized by the Galerie de l’UQAM, delves into her experimentation five decades ago, with particular attention to her time in Italy. Filmed and […]

Lorenza Böttner — Fanny Bieth

Ciel variable 119 - AGAINST NATURE | Exhibition Reviews
Authors: Fanny Bieth | Artists: Lorenza Böttner

[Winter 2022] Galerie Leonard & Bina Ellen, Montréal 29.04.2021 — 19.06.2021 By Fanny Bieth [Excerpt] Lorenza Böttner: Requiem for the Norm is the first international retrospective exhibition for the Chilean-German artist Lorenza Böttner, a trans person who lost both arms as a child following an accident. Böttner’s practice and life embody, to use the words […]

Dawit L. Petros — Claudia Polledri

Ciel variable 119 - AGAINST NATURE | Exhibition Reviews
Authors: Claudia Polledri | Artists: Dawit L. Petros

[Winter 2022] Galerie Bradley Ertaskiran, Montréal 3.09.2021 — 30.10.2021 By Claudia Polledri [Excerpt] Gaps, holes, fissures, and frictions – the title defines the perimeter of the exhibition by Eritrean artist Dawit L. Petros, presented as part of the Momenta 2021 satellite program. In this show, composed of photographs and serigraphs on paper and canvas, Petros, […]

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