Oli Sorenson, Metamonument – Léa Tétrault

Ciel variable - Intimacies | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Léa Tétrault | Artists: Oli Sorenson

Elektra is a gallery whose mission is to introduce people to works and creators presenting a combination of art and new technologies. Given today’s unstable poli­tical and social context, it is important to maintain an open dialogue on the domi­nant discourses shaping the world. Falling squarely within this vocation, Metamonument offered a resolutely contemporary narrative; Oli Sorenson drew on images generated by artificial intelligence, among other things, to propose an emancipatory process that would involve the human community.

NEXTDOOR – Louie Villanueva-Eyre

Ciel variable - Intimacies | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Louie Villanueva-Eyre

During a forum at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, in 2011, the photographer John Pilson remarked, “Anybody listening to this conversation would come away from it thinking that photography is in kind of a crisis.” He was referring to anxieties around the loss of materiality of and social trust in photography, along with a shifting defi­nition of the medium. At the time of that conversation, Calgary had no dedicated contemporary art or photography museum, and critical debates concerning photography were still anchored to institutional centres elsewhere.

Man Ray, When Objects Dream – Ji-Yoon Han

Ciel variable - Intimacies | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Ji-Yoon Han | Artists: Man Ray

This exhibition was a true event – despite its idyllic title, which evoked the polar opposite of the hideous reality into which we seem to sink further every day. At a time when private donations are so influential that they seem to hold sway over art institutions (in fact, this exhibition was no exception), we must nevertheless rejoice in the intelligence, elegance, and appropriateness with which Met curators Stephanie D’Alessandro and Stephen C. Pinson, assisted by Micayla Bransfield, (man)handled their task.

Transcender le banal – Louis Perreault

Ciel variable - Intimacies | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Louis Perreault

In his lovely book The Poetics of Space, the philosopher Gaston Bachelard wrote that “the exterior spectacle helps intimate grandeur unfold.” When Chieko Shiraishi crossed Quebec from Montreal to Escuminac, in the Gaspé Peninsula, she had the sense that she had shrunk, become tiny.

Normand Rajotte, The Illusory Stillness of the Forest – Marie-Josée Rousseau

Ciel variable - Intimacies | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Marie-Josée Rousseau | Artists: Normand Rajotte

What does looking at nature mean today? It seems like a simple question, but it becomes less so in a world satu­rated with images. Is there still direct contact with the living world or just a mediatized notion of what it might be? Normand Rajotte’s photographic work falls precise­­ly into this gap, where looking requires slowing down and relearning to see.

Steve Giasson, Nouvelles nouvelles performances invisibles – Karl-Gilbert Murray

Ciel variable - Intimacies | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Karl-Gilbert Murray | Artists: Steve Giasson

For six months, Steve Giasson posted online, on a twice-weekly basis – on Tuesdays and Thursdays – a corpus of minimalist performances articulated around conceptual statements. This proj­ect, Nouvelles nouvelles performances invisibles, was an extension of one under­taken in 2015 and 2016 with Dare-Dare, then revived in 2020 and 2021 with Le Lieu, centre en art actuel.

Richard Avedon, Immortal. Portraits of Aging, 1951–2004 – Marie-Lise Poirier

Ciel variable - Intimacies | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Marie-Lise Poirier | Artists: Richard Avedon

Although a portrait is presumed, above all, to show a specular relationship between models and their image, it has always been subjected to aesthetic and ideological criteria that require idealization of the subject. Photographers in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries sought to soften the ravages of time engraved on the flesh with careful posing, subtle lighting, and skilful mechanical – then digital – manipulation.

Katherine Takpannie, Every Now and Then I Get a Feeling – Julie Graff

Ciel variable - Intimacies | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Julie Graff | Artists: Katherine Takpannie

Every Now and Then I Get a Feeling, pre­­sented at the SAW artist-run centre, surveyed ten years of photographs by the Inuk artist Katherine Takpannie. Having grown up in Ottawa, where she still lives, Takpannie combines different approaches to capture the complexity of the Inuit experience in the urban environment. She mobilizes art practice as a healing process and to pinpoint responsibility for extractivist exploitation of the land and violence against women. In this sense, she has much in common with other contemporary photographers who are redefining visual representations of the Indigenous presence in the city, such as Barry Pottle, another Inuk who also lives in Ottawa and is known for his engagement with his community.

Yves Arcand, Indicia – Michel Hardy-Vallée

Ciel variable 132 - TABLEAUX | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Michel Hardy-Vallée | Artists: Yves Arcand

Originating from a process that begins with the accumulation of organic matter on acetate sheets, the large-format images in the exhibition Indicia evoked “a scientific imaginary” and suggested “the point of view of a microscope,” according to Michel Hard-Vallée. Through this nature-based practice, which aligns him with photographers such as Michael Flomen, Sara Angelucci, and Normand Rajotte, Yves Arcand probes the indexical dimension of the photographic sign while working at a remove from his subject. This “first assessment” of a decade of research, the critic argues, calls for a continuation.

Andrea Szilasi, Réfléchir – Alexis Desgagnés

Ciel variable 132 - TABLEAUX | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Alexis Desgagnés | Artists: Andrea Szilasi

The fifteen collages and six Polaroids by Andrea Szilasi brought together under the title Réfléchir prompted a response from Alexis Desgagnés marked by both sensitivity and restraint. “I realized that I had to speak not only about an exhibition but about this unique and paradoxical experience,” he writes. While he carefully describes the works, which emerge from a “manual, gestural, instinctive” process, he argues that the notions of space and the body provide the framework that “were key to reflecting” on the exhibition as a whole.

Geneviève Thibault, Intérieurs – Bernard Schütze

Ciel variable 132 - TABLEAUX | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Bernard Schütze | Artists: Geneviève Thibault

Presented at the Maison du notaire in Trois-Pistoles, Intérieurs was grounded in the principle of democratizing art, though through what Bernard Schütze describes as an “inversion of the gaze”: local residents were invited to propose objects they considered to have artistic value. The exhibition, the critic observes, “shifted the aesthetic question toward lived experience and the everyday.” The approximately sixty objects on display were accompanied by photographs by Geneviève Thibault, whose photographic intervention in participants’ homes echoed the exhibition’s emphasis on abundance and the absence of hierarchy.

Jasmin Bilodeau, C’est trop beau, je vais le prendre en photo – Nathalie Côté

Ciel variable 132 - TABLEAUX | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Nathalie Côté | Artists: Jasmin Bilodeau

A reflection on obsolescence and dematerialization, this exhibition contained only four photographs, yet each was monumental in scale and the result of an extensive process involving two stages of image capture and the use of maquettes. Depicting the seasons through four abandoned buildings, the series occupies a space between documentary and fiction, imbued with the trompe-l’œil sensibility that has long characterized BGL, the collective of which Jasmin Bilodeau was once a member. For Nathalie Côté, the artist thus reaffirms his affinity for a mode of working that is “physical, almost sculptural,” grounded in manipulation and hands-on making.

Storage Story – Safia Belmenouar

Ciel variable 132 - TABLEAUX | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Safia Belmenouar

The inaugural exhibition of South Korea’s first public museum dedicated to photography—the Photo SeMA—engaged in dialogue with the institution’s archives (comprising 20,000 works and documents), its surroundings, and a building designed in the shape of a camera shutter. Safia Belmenouar discusses the works of the six artists who approached the museum “a living space in which multiple experiences, narratives, and reinterpretations intersected.” The exhibition explored the very notion of collecting, presenting the Photo SeMA as “a place of fertile tensions rather than a museified space.”

Araki Nobuyoshi, Polaraki – Jessica Ragazzini

Ciel variable 132 - TABLEAUX | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Jessica Ragazzini | Artists: Araki Nobuyoshi

Prolific and provocative, Araki Nobuyoshi embraced the Polaroid for its simplicity and immediacy. It served, as Jessica Ragazzini puts it, as a means to “eternally fix the ephemeral,” a notion explored in her review of the Musée Guimet exhibition dedicated to the Japanese photographer. Linked to the donation of a collection of one thousand Polaroids, POLARAKI reflected both Araki’s penchant for excess and his experimental, almost casual approach to image-making, as he cuts, rearranges, and scribbles on his photographs. Ragazzini also notes the complexity of his practice, shaped by themes of eroticism and the traditional art of rope bondage.

Sepideh Farsi, Put Your Soul on Your Hands and Walk – Claudia Polledri

Ciel variable 132 - TABLEAUX | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Claudia Polledri | Artists: Sepideh Farsi

A haunting film about Gaza, Put Your Soul on Your Hands and Walk takes the form of a dialogue conducted through video communications between the filmmaker and a Palestinian photographer. The latter’s death, killed in a bombing, brings the narrative to an abrupt end. The documentary, a “cinematographic tribute to how photography bears witness” writes Claudia Polledri, sheds light on the realities of daily precarity. The technological disruptions, the critic notes, mirrors the protagonist’s living conditions.

Camera and the City – Stéphanie Yvette Hornstein

Ciel variable 132 - TABLEAUX | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Stéphanie Yvette Hornstein

Drawn from the collection of the National Gallery of Canada, the exhibition Camera and the City explored street photography. According to Stéphanie Yvette Hornstein, however, it did little to renew the way the subject is approached. Her review highlights a key concern—the narrative is “MoMA-centric,” in her view—but also underscores some of the exhibition’s strengths, particularly the conceptual photography section, featuring artists such as Susan Dobson, Melvin Charney, VALIE EXPORT, and others whose work exposes the shortcomings and contradictions of urban space.

Marie-Alice Dumont. In Conversation with Raymonde April – Hélène Samson

Ciel variable 131 – COLLECTING | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Hélène Samson | Artists: Marie-Alice Dumont, Raymonde April

An unlikely meeting between two artists—Marie-Alice Dumont, a historic figure in Québec photography as one of the first women in the profession, and Raymonde April, from the contemporary scene—this exhibition at the Musée du Bas-Saint-Laurent brought their images together through a fluid installation. From their aesthetic disparity (the singular gaze of one, the poetic polysemy of the other) emerged an empathy toward the subjects and a connection with everyday life, materiality, and the rural landscape, noted Hélène Samson.

Yan Giguère, Somme toute – Charlotte Lalou Rousseau

Ciel variable 131 – COLLECTING | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Charlotte Lalou Rousseau | Artists: Yan Giguère

[Winter 2026] Somme toute by Charlotte Lalou Rousseau Occurrence, espace d’art et d’essai contemporains, Montréal 10.04.2025 — 14.06.2025 [EXCERPT] In his exhibition Somme toute, Yan Giguère presented twelve photographic assemblages from his eponymous project of fourteen “stations” – Giguère’s word for them – which totalled 242 analogue images. Their composition and form of installation testified […]

Patrick Dionne et Miki Gingras, Uchronie – Marcel Blouin

Ciel variable 131 – COLLECTING | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Marcel Blouin | Artists: Miki Gingras, Patrick Dionne

A humanist-leaning exhibition, with a focus on “visceral contestation and disturbing police repression,” Uchronie drew on image-based practices, social sciences, and philosophy. The works of Patrick Dionne and Miki Gingras, where fiction and documentation brush against each other, recall those of Gisèle Freund or Donigan Cumming, according to Marcel Blouin. Uchronie “intelligently avoiding the shoals of objective pseudo-documentation and appealing to the people concerned […] to show what needs to show,” he writes.

Sébastien Michaud, Façonner son sentier – Mariane Tremblay

Ciel variable 131 – COLLECTING | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Mariane Tremblay | Artists: Sébastien Michaud

Like a walk through the forest, Sébastien Michaud’s exhibition featured around twenty “picture or sculpture stations” made from manipulated and distorted prints. Before these photographs of nature, Mariane Tremblay saw an invitation to an introspective journey, to the “let themselves become forest” advocated by philosopher Baptiste Morizot. She writes that our relationship with the living world in the face of the ecological crisis depends on the human capacity to change and adapt.

Simon Émond, Phobos Deimos – Bernard Lamarche

Ciel variable 131 – COLLECTING | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Bernard Lamarche | Artists: Simon Émond

Adapted from a photographic book, the exhibition Phobos Deimos took the form of a labyrinth, in which Simon Émond evoked the figures of Fear and Terror, as well as that of the monster. The transition from the “invocatory cry” of the original project to an immersive experience of the images was a success, according to Bernard Lamarche. “We may emerge unscathed from [our encounter with the monster],” he writes, “or, as this exhibition did so well, it will swallow us.”

Jacynthe Carrier, du seuil à la cime – Jean-Michel Quirion

Ciel variable 131 – COLLECTING | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Jean-Michel Quirion | Artists: Jacynthe Carrier

Jacynthe Carrier’s works are among those that brush past us like a breath, according to Jean-Michel Quirion. Better still, he writes, they “reach out and softly embrace us” in his review of du seuil à la cime. The video and photographic installations that formed the exhibition revealed the life cycles animating an urban wasteland. Through the addition of performative actions, the artist renders it welcoming, turning it into a place to inhabit, where one can “make territory together.”

Julianknxx, Chorus in Rememory of Flight – Sylvain Campeau

Ciel variable 131 – COLLECTING | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Sylvain Campeau | Artists: Julianknxx

The exhibition circulated by London’s Barbican Centre and seen by Sylvain Campeau in Lisbon reflected Julianknxx’s commitment to the African diaspora in Europe. Originally from Sierra Leone, the England-based artist explored, most notably in a monumental three-screen video, the presence of Black bodies in cities where racism remains latent. The result, described by the critic as “astounding,” asserted that the renewal of this population’s identity enriches society.

Skawennati, Welcome to the Dreamhouse – Julie Graff

Ciel variable 131 – COLLECTING | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Julie Graff | Artists: Skawennati

A key figure in media arts and cyberspace, Skawennati speculates on fairer futures more conducive to the flourishing of Indigenous people. The retrospective at the National Gallery of Canada presented her renowned machinimas and machinimagraphs (films and images related to virtual environments), as well as installations that, according to Julie Graff, allowed viewers to navigate between different degrees of realism. Organized around a theme with multiple meanings, the exhibition addressed both “the lack of Indigenous representation” and “colonial narratives of stasis and disappearance.”

Leyla Majeri, Si tu ne te souviens pas, invente – Nathalie Côté

Ciel variable 130 - PLANTS AND GARDENS | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Nathalie Côté

[Fall 2025] Si tu ne te souviens pas, invente by Nathalie Côté VU, Québec 08.03.2025 — 20.04.2025 [EXCERPT] The installation that Leyla Majeri presented at VU stood out for her aesthetic, her approach, and her method. Composed of a montage of short film sequences and four abstract sepia-tone photographic series, the exhibition was the result […]

Léna Mill-Reuillard, Double Instantanéité – Sylvain Campeau

Ciel variable 130 - PLANTS AND GARDENS | Exhibition reviews
Artists: Léna Mill-Reuillard

[Fall 2025] Double Instantanéité by Sylvain Campeau La Bande Vidéo, Québec 11.01.2025 — 9.02.2025 [EXCERPT] Anyone who has visited La Bande Vidéo will have noticed that its gallery is not very big. Once viewers enter, they are right on top of the works on display. This rapid immersion can be a pitfall: the artist must […]

Lorna Bauer, Sunday is Violet – Fanny Bieth

Ciel variable 130 - PLANTS AND GARDENS | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Fanny Bieth | Artists: Lorna Bauer

[Fall 2025] Sunday is Violet by Fanny Bieth Galerie Nicolas Robert, Montréal 27.02.2025 — 05.04.2025 [EXCERPT] Presented in the Montreal premises of Galerie Nicolas Robert, the exhibition Sunday is Violet featured a series of works made in 2024 by Lorna Bauer, who combines photography, sculpture, and installation in her practice. Flowers were central to the […]

Thomas Kneubühler, The Dividing Line – Sophie Mangado

Ciel variable 130 - PLANTS AND GARDENS | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Sophie Mangado | Artists: Thomas Kneubühler, Thomas Kneubühler

[Fall 2025] The Dividing Line by Sophie Mangado Optica – Centre d’art contemporain, Montréal 17.01.2025 — 29.03.2025 [EXCERPT] Thomas Kneubühler, a Swiss-born photographer and video artist living in Montreal, is interested in spaces to which access is limited. He designed the installation The Dividing Line to fit within one of the galleries at Optica. Immediately […]

Jeff Thomas, Stories My Father Couldn’t Tell Me – Sophie Guignard

Ciel variable 130 - PLANTS AND GARDENS | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Sophie Guignard | Artists: Jeff Thomas

[Fall 2025] Stories My Father Couldn’t Tell Me by Sophie Guignard Galerie d’art d’Ottawa 19.10.2024 — 16.03.2025 [EXCERPT] The exhibition Stories My Father Couldn’t Tell Me: Jeff Thomas Origin surveyed forty years of images by Jeff Thomas, a member of the Onondaga Nation. Following a car accident in 1979, which left him with a permanent […]

1985. Image-Worlds – Hélène Samson

Ciel variable 130 - PLANTS AND GARDENS | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Hélène Samson

[Fall 2025] 1985. Image-Worlds by Hélène Samson VOX, centre de l’image contemporaine, Montréal 27.03.2025 — 21.06.2025 [EXCERPT] The VOX centre celebrated its fortieth anniversary in 2025. This seemed a good opportunity to devote an exhibition to the decade in which it was born. More than seventy photographic and video works by thirty artists, along with […]

Laure Prouvost, Oma-je – Marcus Miller

Ciel variable 130 - PLANTS AND GARDENS | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Marcus Miller | Artists: Laure Prouvost

[Fall 2025] Oma-je by Marcus Miller PHI, Montréal 01.11.202 — 09.03.2025 [EXCERPT] Step into Laure Prouvost’s bohemian tea room and enjoy a “cuppa.” No pinkies-up here. This room, crowded with the detritus of departed loved ones, is at once claustrophobic, disorienting, and strangely familiar. Although it seems to be in a state of great disarray, […]

Sébastien Cliche, Fluctuation du semblable – Jean-Michel Quirion

Ciel variable 130 - PLANTS AND GARDENS | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Jean-Michel Quirion | Artists: Sébastien Cliche

[Fall 2025] Fluctuation du semblable by Jean-Michel Quirion Occurrence, espace d’art et d’essai contemporains, Montréal 18.01.2025 — 15.03.2025 [EXCERPT] In Fluctuation du semblable, a body of work presented in a solo exhibition at Occurrence, we were abruptly immersed by the Montreal artist Sébastien Cliche into the elsewhere of a speculative dehumanized society. The gallery, usually […]

Linda Rutenberg, Traces: Earth’s Memories – Christian Roy

Ciel variable 129 - FROM CONTINENT TO CONTINENT | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Christian Roy | Artists: Linda Rutenberg

[Summer 2025] Traces: Earth’s Memories by Christian Roy [EXCERPT] Montreal photographer Linda Rutenberg’s exhibition Traces surveyed the second half of her thirty-year career, juxtaposing three bodies of work related to the theme of fragile traces of threatened environments, whether they be natural, cultural, or a combination of the two. The instal­lation that viewers reached after […]

Janis Rafa, Landscape Depressions – Marie Perrault

Ciel variable 129 - FROM CONTINENT TO CONTINENT | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Marie Perrault | Artists: Janis Rafa

[Summer 2025] Landscape Depressions by Marie Perrault [EXCERPT] Janis Rafa, a Greek-born artist based in Amsterdam, is known for her multimedia installations, sculptures, drawings, and films. This exhibition featured a selection of video works from the last ten years that foreground relationships between humans and animals. Pointing her camera toward the spaces where these relationships […]

Chantal Akerman, Travelling – Stephen Horne

Ciel variable 129 - FROM CONTINENT TO CONTINENT | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Stephen Horne | Artists: Chantal Akerman

[Summer 2025] Travelling by Stephen Horne [EXCERPT] The exhibition Travelling presented the practice and life of the acclaimed experimental filmmaker Chantal Akerman (1950–2015), for whom a film was a place to be brought into being, a precarious and personal journey toward the visible. To this end, starting in the 1990s, she began to show her […]

Antoine d’Agata, Methode – Jessica Ragazzini

Ciel variable 129 - FROM CONTINENT TO CONTINENT | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Jessica Ragazzini

[Summer 2025] Methode by Jessica Ragazzini [EXCERPT] During his residency-exhibition Méthode, Antoine d’Agata invited visitors to the Centre Pompidou to enter the complex, raw world of his photographic practice. For a hundred days, he transformed one of the museum’s galleries into an open studio in which he had amassed three decades of archives, visual narratives, […]

Faits divers – Julie Martin

Ciel variable 129 - FROM CONTINENT TO CONTINENT | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Julie Martin

[Summer 2025] Faits divers by Julie Martin [EXCERPT] Considered a minor form of news, often replete with sordid situations, faits divers (weird local news items) lure and fasci­nate as much as they draw repugnance and contempt. Although this ambivalence is key to how we think of such content, the artists gathered at the MAC VAL […]

My-Van Dam, Connecting From the Inside Out – Jean-Michel Quirion

Ciel variable 129 - FROM CONTINENT TO CONTINENT | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Jean-Michel Quirion

[Summer 2025] Connecting From the Inside Out by Jean-Michel Quirion [EXCERPT] The multidisciplinary artist My-Van Dam’s exhibition Connecting From the Inside Out, presented at MAI in fall 2024 and curated by Geneviève Wallen, evinces striking fragility. During an intensive month-long research-creation residency at SBC Galerie d’art contemporain in summer 2023 (with support from Atelier circulaire […]

August Sander, Sander Sardinia 1927 – Kenneth Hayes

Ciel variable 129 - FROM CONTINENT TO CONTINENT | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Kenneth Hayes | Artists: August Sander

[Summer 2025] Sander Sardinia 1927 by Kenneth Hayes [EXCERPT] This tightly focused exhibition presents photographs that August Sander made on his little-known journey to Sardinia in the spring of 1927, just prior to the debut of the presentation of his life-work, The People of the 20th Century, at the Kölnischer Kunstverein, in Cologne, later that […]

Michaëlle Sergile, To All the Unnamed Women – Érika Nimis

Ciel variable 129 - FROM CONTINENT TO CONTINENT | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Erika Nimis | Artists: Michaëlle Sergile

[Summer 2025] To All the Unnamed Women by Érika Nimis [EXCERPT] The McCord Stewart Museum’s Artist­- in-Residence program, launched in 2012, invites artists to immerse themselves in the museum’s collections, including the Notman Photographic Archives, in order to form new interpretations of them. In 2023, Karen Tam produced the immersive installation Swallowing Mountains, paying tribute […]

Paolo Roversi – Ewa Monika Zebrowski

Ciel variable 128 – CHANGE OF SCENE | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Ewa Monika Zebrowski | Artists: Paolo Roversi

In her first piece of writing, photographer Ewa Monika Zebrowski reflects on the work of Paolo Roversi, whose retrospective she attended. The exhibition celebrated the experimentation of this fashion and portrait photographer skilled in the techniques of Polaroid.

Yann Pocreau, Des images-lumière – Jean-Michel Quirion

Ciel variable 128 – CHANGE OF SCENE | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Jean-Michel Quirion | Artists: Yann Pocreau

The second iteration of a project on color and light, Yann Pocreau’s exhibition at the Centre Sagamie took the form of a collection of photographic, cinematic and expographical atmospheres. The content was not the result of taking photographs, but of collecting found images and intervening on them in various ways.

Ewa Monika Zebrowski and Anna Lois Dawson Harrington, Light and Fog – Didier Morelli

Ciel variable 128 – CHANGE OF SCENE | Exhibition reviews
Artists: Anna Lois Dawson Harrington, Ewa Monika Zebrowski

The encounter between nature and culture, inherent to the Reford Gardens, resonated in the exhibition Light and Fog. Curator Hélène Samson used the representation of the landscape to create an encounter between two eras, between the photography of Ewa Monika Zebrowski and the watercolors of Anna Dawson and Lois Harrington.

Richard Mosse, Broken Spectre – Sylvain Campeau

Ciel variable 128 – CHANGE OF SCENE | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Sylvain Campeau | Artists: Richard Mosse

Richard Mosse is known for his use of technologies originally designed for non-artistic purposes. For his project in the Amazon, he used a device that reproduces the thermal signature of the human body, aiming this time to capture natural ecosystems. While he imitates companies seeking to exploit land, the Irish artist does so in order to denounce them.

Sandra Brewster, Lullaby of Birdlands – Earl Miller

Ciel variable 128 – CHANGE OF SCENE | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Earl Miller | Artists: Sandra Brewster

For the exhibition Lullaby of Birdland, Sandra Brewster presented images printed by gel transfer. This technique, specific to analog photography, involves a number of imperfections that the artist accentuated by crumpling the paper and giving it an illusion of wear.

Thomas Struth, Nature & Politics – Stephen Horne

Ciel variable 128 – CHANGE OF SCENE | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Stephen Horne | Artists: Thomas Struth

Thomas Struth’s exhibition at the Marian Goodman Gallery brought together photographs from the last fifteen years, including those from his visits to the European Organization for Nuclear Research, a place marked by the measurement of time.

Virginie Laganière, Le silence des murs – Esther Bourdages

Ciel variable 128 – CHANGE OF SCENE | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Esther Bourdages | Artists: Virginie Laganière

Virginie Laganière’s exhibition at Occurrence revisited the “silence of the walls,” inspired by an old nuclear power plant in Switzerland that has been converted into a storage facility for cultural goods belonging to museum institutions.

Nathalie Bujold, Métroscopies – Sylvain Campeau

Ciel variable 127 – SISTERS, FIGHTERS, QUEENS | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Michel Campeau | Artists: Nathalie Bujold

Flowing from the video recording of the Montreal metro that Nathalie Bujold made as she rode, equipped only with her cell phone, the exhibition Métroscopies comprises eleven screens that convey both unity and diversity.

Josée Pedneault, Talle – Laurie Boivin

Ciel variable 127 – SISTERS, FIGHTERS, QUEENS | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Laurie Boivin | Artists: Josée Pedneault

A meditative, almost wondrous experience, in Laurie Boivin’s view, the exhibition Talle immersed viewers in the underbrush of the Saguenay–Lac-Saint-Jean region. In works produced during photographic missions developed by Les Rencontres de la photographie en Gaspésie, Josée Pedneault joined people picking berries in secret spots where wild fruits grow in abundance.

Simon S. Belleau, Répliques – Jean-Michel Quirion

Ciel variable 127 – SISTERS, FIGHTERS, QUEENS | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Jean-Michel Quirion | Artists: Simon S. Belleau

Montreal artist Simon S. Belleau’s most important exhibition in his decade-long career, Répliques, combined a film, works on paper, and an architectural intervention. Ambitious and spectacular, in the view of Jean-Michel Quirion, Belleau’s offering evoked the work in preparation or backstage in a theatre or film set, by paying attention to what is made visible and what is hidden.

Sofía Gallisá Muriente et Natalia Lassalle-Morillo, Foreign in a Domestic Sense – Didier Morelli

Ciel variable 127 – SISTERS, FIGHTERS, QUEENS | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Didier Morelli | Artists: Natalia Lassalle-Morillo, Sofía Gallisá Muriente

Reflecting the political and identity-related ambiguity of Puerto Rico, the artists Sofía Gallisá Muriente and Natalia Lassalle-Morillo produced a four-channel video installation, shot in Florida among members of the Puerto Rican diaspora.

De la vie au lit – Fanny Bieth

Ciel variable 127 – SISTERS, FIGHTERS, QUEENS | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Fanny Bieth

Unlike what capitalist customs would have us believe, beds are not made simply for rest with a view to better productivity on the job. As the exhibition De la vie au lit advocates, a bed can also be a space for creation, discussion, or action – a place where people with disabilities or illnesses express themselves. The works on display addressed the question of inclusivity and urged us to rethink our spaces and our practices.

Jeremy Shaw, Phase Shifting Index – Marie Perrault

Ciel variable 127 – SISTERS, FIGHTERS, QUEENS | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Marie Perrault | Artists: Jeremy Shaw

Phase Shifting Index, Jeremy Shaw’s seven-channel video installation illustrating how physical and collective rituals influence minds is so impactful that viewers may experience profound illumination, as Marie Perrault suggests. From the initial cacophony to the final rave, the work is the spectacular outcome of Shaw’s twenty years of research into sublimation and its cognitive effects.

Suzanne Lafont, Et toi, chère plante ? – Nathalie Côté

Ciel variable 127 – SISTERS, FIGHTERS, QUEENS | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Nathalie Côté | Artists: Suzanne Lafont

Far from the herbarium and botanical identification, the images that Suzanne Lafont produces from the wildflowers and weeds that she gathers comprise an exploration of colour and relationships between the visual and the written. Following in the tradition of conceptual art, as Nathalie Côté notes, Lafont manipulates her photographs to obtain surreal results, even as she evokes our connections with nature in a myriad of ways.

Eric Tschaeppeler, Birth Order – Michel Hellman

Ciel variable 127 – SISTERS, FIGHTERS, QUEENS | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Michel Hellman | Artists: Eric Tschaeppeler

The order in which children are born plays a fundamental role in the construction of their identity. This notion is behind Eric Tschaeppeler’s series of portraits of siblings titled Birth Order. When Michel Hellman saw the exhibition, he appreciated the absence of artifice and was struck by the composition and intimate nature of the images.

Pussy Riot, Velvet Terrorism – Kelly Midori McCormick

Ciel variable 127 – SISTERS, FIGHTERS, QUEENS | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Kelly Midori McCormick

Irreverential both in its political actions and in the dissemination of its works, Pussy Riot acts with boldness and humour. Kelly Midori McCormick’s observations were made during her visit to the group’s retrospective at The Polygon Gallery, which offered a reflection of the discontent fulminating in Russia even before the invasion of Ukraine.

Sophie Jodoin, d’un seul souffle – Michel Hardy-Vallée

Ciel variable 126 – TRAJECTORIES | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Michel Hardy-Vallée | Artists: Sophie Jodoin

[Summer 2024] by Michel Hardy-Vallée [EXCERPT] Sophie Jodoin is an artist of grey nuances. Her range of tones is predictable and her textures are matte – diametrically opposed to the canons of black-and-white photography, in which the world is projected through a scale of contrasts from deep shadows to brilliant reflections. By restraining her palette, […]

Fabiano Kueva, Archive Alexandre de Humboldt Montréal – Gabrielle Sarthou

Ciel variable 126 – TRAJECTORIES | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Gabrielle Sarthou | Artists: Fabiano Kueva

[Summer 2024] by Gabrielle Sarthou [EXCERPT] The exhibition Archive Alexandre de Humboldt Montréal, organized in collaboration with the independent curator Emmanuelle Choquette, is part of a project built over more than ten years by the Ecuadorian artist, curator, and director Fabiano Kueva, whose works combine sound art, installation, and experimental video. It was presented as […]

Manon de Pauw, Lueurs oniriques – Maxence Croteau

Ciel variable 126 – TRAJECTORIES | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Maxence Croteau | Artists: Manon De Pauw

[Summer 2024] by Maxence Croteau [EXCERPT] In a rather paroxysmal context in which human-made destruction is scaling up to a hecatomb, the digital interface is inescapable in our lives. Some see it as a mutilated and mutilating way of life in which we are inter-isolated in a totalizing connectivity, reduced to being powerless spectators stupefied […]

SMITH, Outre — Jessica Ragazzini

Ciel variable 126 – TRAJECTORIES | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Jessica Ragazzini

[Summer 2024] by Jessica Ragazzini [EXCERPT] Outre. In the French-language dictionary, the word outre has several definitions. First, as a common noun, outre is an animal pelt sewn into a bag and used as a receptacle. As an adverb, it designates going beyond something. Finally, as a preposition, it signifies an addition. The works by […]

Jean-Jacques Ringuette, Sombre – Méditation sur les abîmes – Karl-Gilbert Murray

Ciel variable 126 – TRAJECTORIES | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Karl-Gilbert Murray | Artists: Jean-Jacques Ringuette

[Summer 2024] by Karl-Gilbert Murray [EXCERPT] Each image that Jean-Jacques Ringuette creates forcefully, determinedly, and constantly assails the viewer’s eye. Its ambience, whether dreamlike, conflictual, or surrealistic, always offers a mix of affects that reflect a mythology of the human condition and provoke an instant response to the unpredictable spectacle of life. Ringuette’s photographs presented […]

Geneviève Thibault, Corps habité — Alexandra Tourigny Fleury

Ciel variable 126 – TRAJECTORIES | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Alexandra Tourigny Fleury | Artists: Geneviève Thibault

[Summer 2024] by Alexandra Tourigny Fleury [EXCERPT] The works presented in the exhibition Corps habité are the result of a relationship that Geneviève Thibault cultivated with the Ursuline Sisters of Quebec City over many years. In 2017, the nuns announced that they had to leave the convent in Old Quebec City that had been home […]

Laurence Hervieux-Gosselin, Lune de craie — Sylvain Campeau

Ciel variable 126 – TRAJECTORIES | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Sylvain Campeau | Artists: Laurence Hervieux-Gosselin

[Summer 2024] par Sylvain Campeau [EXCERPT] As I was beginning to write this review of Laurence Hervieux-Gosselin’s exhibition, the fact that she had won the Prix Lynne Cohen in 2021 suddenly came to mind. Beyond the importance and prestige attached to this award, in this case – more than in others – there seem to […]

Sara A. Tremblay, Poids, plumes – Franck Michel

Ciel variable 125 – AGGLOMERATIONS | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Franck Michel | Artists: Sara A. Tremblay

[Winter 2024] By Franck Michel Galerie B-312, Montréal 10.03.2023 — 29.04.2023 [Excerpt] The exhibition Poids, plumes marks a return to the gallery for Sara A. Tremblay after a number of years away. Her great sensitivity and pointed sense of observation are still evident in these works, which display the themes dearest to her: the intimate […]

Patrick Beaulieu, Transvasements – Jérôme Delgado

Ciel variable 125 – AGGLOMERATIONS | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Jérôme Delgado | Artists: Patrick Beaulieu, Patrick Beaulieu

[Winter 2024] By Jérôme Delgado Art Mûr, Montréal 9.09.2023 — 28.10.2023 [Excerpt] In still and moving images, as well as by various other means (installation, ambient sound, found objects), the exhibition Transvasements takes us to the south of France for a boat trip – in an old fishing boat, to be precise, furnished with a […]

Léna Mill-Reuillard, Airer – Marie Perrault

Ciel variable 125 – AGGLOMERATIONS | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Marie Perrault, Marie Perrault | Artists: Léna Mill-Reuillard

[Winter 2024] By Marie Perrault DRAC Art actuel, Drummondville 8.07.2023 — 20.08.2023 [Excerpt] The exhibition Airer at DRAC Art actuel consisted of Léna Mill-Reuillard’s video installation shot at dusk during a residency at the Grantham Foundation. Projected on six big size screens, the installation transposes the spatial organization of the foundation’s building situated near Drummondville. […]

John Akomfrah, Purple – Ariane Noël de Tilly

Ciel variable 125 – AGGLOMERATIONS | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Ariane Noël de Tilly | Artists: John Akomfrah

[Winter 2024] By Ariane Noël de Tilly Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC 23.11.2022 — 7.01.2024 [Excerpt] Like Caspar David Friedrich’s paintings featuring a traveller, a monk, or a handful of people painted from the back looking out at a grandiose landscape – Moonrise over the Sea (1822), for example – the Ghanaian-British artist […]

Michel Huneault, Péninsule – Baptiste Grison

Ciel variable 125 – AGGLOMERATIONS | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Baptiste Grison | Artists: Michel Huneault

[Winter 2024] By Baptiste Grison Musée régional de Rimouski 4.06.2023 — 3.09.2023 [Excerpt] “Does this line exist if we don’t see it?” Michel Huneault asked himself this question when he visited the website Surging Seas, which features easy-to-use interactive “risk maps” that allow users to view the prospective effects of sea level rises caused by […]

Shirin Neshat, The Fury – Emmanuelle Choquette

Ciel variable 125 – AGGLOMERATIONS | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Emmanuelle Choquette | Artists: Shirin Neshat

[Winter 2024] By Emmanuelle Choquette Centre PHI, Montréal 28.06.2023 — 20.08.2023 [Excerpt] Iranian artist Shirin Neshat’s exhibition The Fury resonates strikingly with current events. Neshat addresses the subject of violence perpetrated on people imprisoned for political reasons in the Islamic Republic of Iran, with a specific focus on the treatment of women and girls, many […]

Josué Azor, Emmanuel Galland, Roberto Stephenson, Haïti – Territoires informels – Jean-Michel Quirion

Ciel variable 125 – AGGLOMERATIONS | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Jean-Michel Quirion | Artists: Emmanuel Galland, Josué Azor, Roberto Stephenson

[Winter 2024] By Jean-Michel Quirion Art-image et espace Odyssée de la Maison de la culture de Gatineau 6.07.2023 — 27.08.2023 [Excerpt] The travelling exhibition Haïti – Territoires informels, an initiative by the Montreal artist and curator Emmanuel Galland, is deployed in three series of images by three photographers: Galland himself and the Haitian photographers Josué […]

Shelley Niro, 500 Year Itch – Sophie Guignard

Ciel variable 125 – AGGLOMERATIONS | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Sophie Guignard | Artists: Shelley Niro

[Winter 2024] By Sophie Guignard National Museum of the American Indian, New York 27.05.2023 — 1.01.2024 [Excerpt] The exhibition Shelley Niro: 500 Year Itch is the first major retrospective for Shelley Niro, a multidisciplinary Mohawk artist from the Bay of Quinte Kanyen’kehá:ka Nation and member of the Six Nations of the Grand River, Turtle Clan. […]

Evergon Nitty Gritty: Male Toilet Angst — Karl-Gilbert Murray

Ciel variable 124 – SEEING THROUGH IMAGES | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Karl-Gilbert Murray | Artists: Evergon

[Fall 2023] By Karl-Gilbert Murray [Excerpt] Ellephant, Montréal 25.02.2023 — 28.04.2023 The exhibition Nitty Gritty: Male Toilet Angst at Galerie Ellephant presents a group of Evergon’s photographs from the series Manscapes. Bathed in backlighting that indicates an aesthetic choice, the images suggest a sense of reflection that oscillates between study of morals and analysis of […]

Lynne Cohen / Marina Gadonneix, Laboratories / Observatories — Stephen Horne

Ciel variable 124 – SEEING THROUGH IMAGES | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Stephen Horne | Artists: Lynne Cohen

[Fall 2023] By [Excerpt] Centre Pompidou, Paris 12.04.2023 — 28.08.2023 “It’s not that I don’t care about content, but content is not the only way a photograph has meaning.” — James Welling The exhibition Laboratories/Observatories comprises large bodies of work by two contemporary photographers: the late American/Canadian Lynne Cohen (1944– 2014) and the French Marina […]

Sanaz Sohrabi, Extraction Out of Frame — Stéphanie Hornstein

Ciel variable 124 – SEEING THROUGH IMAGES | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Stéphanie Hornstein | Artists: Sanaz Sohrabi

[Fall 2023] By Stéphanie Hornstein [Excerpt] VOX, centre de l’image contemporaine, Montréal 14.01.2023 — 4.03.2023 In an all-new body of work commissioned by VOX, Sanaz Sohrabi traces the imperialist legacy of Britain’s involvement in the exploitation of Iranian oil resources from the first concession, in 1901, to the forced nationalization of the British Petroleum Company […]

Bert Danckaert, Teatros — Emmanuel Galland

Ciel variable 124 – SEEING THROUGH IMAGES | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Emmanuel Galland | Artists: Bert Danckaert

[Fall 2023] By Emmanuel Galland [Excerpt] Galerie Laroche / Joncas, Montréal 11.01.2023 — 11.02.2023 The Belgian artist Bert Danckaert’s regular visits to Cuba seem to have created a new opening in his work, as can be seen in his recent series Teatros (2018–22). In his previous projects, he collected fragments of urban life in tight […]

Goose Village, Marisa Portolese — Sophie Bertrand

Ciel variable 124 – SEEING THROUGH IMAGES | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Sophie Bertrand | Artists: Marisa Portolese

[Fall 2023] By Sophie Bertrand [Excerpt] Occurrence, espace d’art et d’essai contemporains, Montréal 20.01.2023 — 11.03.2023 Once upon a time, there was Goose Village – also called Village-aux-Oies or Victoriatown – a working-class district in Montreal, adjacent to the port on one side and the Canadian National Railway train yards on the other. This enclave […]

Joannie Lafrenière, Hochelaga – Montréal en mutation — Michel Hellman

Ciel variable 124 – SEEING THROUGH IMAGES | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Michel Hellman | Artists: Joannie Lafrenière

[Fall 2023] By Michel Hellman [Excerpt] Musée McCord Stewart, Montréal 31.03.2023 — 10.09.2023 When the director and photographer Joannie Lafrenière was approached by the McCord Stewart Museum to take part in the second edition of Evolving Montreal (a program of photographic commissions on the theme of transformation of the city’s neighbourhoods), she had no doubt […]

Mary Ellen Mark, Ward 81 — Fanny Bieth

Ciel variable 124 – SEEING THROUGH IMAGES | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Fanny Bieth

[Fall 2023] By Fanny Bieth [Excerpt] The Image Centre, Toronto 25.01.2023 — 1.04.2023 In winter 1975, Mary Ellen Mark was the on-set photographer for the shooting of Miloš Forman’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest on location at a psychiatric institution, the Oregon State Hospital, where she first met and photographed patients. She returned the […]

Alain Paiement, Cosmic Blues — Sylvain Campeau

Ciel variable 124 – SEEING THROUGH IMAGES | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Sylvain Campeau | Artists: Alain Paiement

[Fall 2023] By Sylvain Campeau [Excerpt] Galerie Hugues Charbonneau Montréal 15.03.2023 — 23.04.2023 Theodor Adorno wondered whether it was still possible to write poetry after the horrors of Auschwitz. The same question can no doubt be asked today, of the entire field of art, as we wait uneasily to find out how climate change will […]

Natascha Niederstrass, The Vanishing Woman / Escamotage d’une femme — Emmanuelle Choquette

Ciel variable 123 – THE POWER OF INTIMACY | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Emmanuelle Choquette | Artists: Natascha Niederstrass

[Summer 2023] By Emmanuelle Choquette Galerie Patrick Mikhail, Montréal 19.11.2022 — 4.02.2023 [Excerpt] The exhibition The Vanishing Woman, presented at Galerie Patrick Mikhail, follows on from a series produced during a residency at Centre VU. This is a new iteration of the project, which was first shown during Manif d’art 10 – La biennale de […]

Diane Arbus, Photographs, 1956–1971 — Laetitia Barrere

Ciel variable 123 – THE POWER OF INTIMACY | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Laeticia Barrere | Artists: Diane Arbus

[Summer 2023] By Laetitia Barrere Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal 15.09.2022 — 29.01.2023 [Excerpt] The exhibition Diane Arbus: Photographs, 1956–1971 features some one hundred images, selected from a major acquisition of 522 silver gelatin prints by the Art Gallery of Ontario in 2017. Mounted first in Toronto, then in Montreal – after a detour to […]

Rebecca Bair and Karice Mitchell, Together/Apart – Neil Price

Ciel variable 123 – THE POWER OF INTIMACY | Exhibition reviews

[Summer 2023] By Neil Price Susan Hobbs Gallery, Toronto 03.12.2022 — 14.01.2023 [Excerpt] Black feminists have long been concerned with what Patricia Hill Collins refers to as “controlling images.” They have consistently pointed out (and called out) ways in which such images have hamper and harm Black women’s struggle for freedom by reducing their experiences […]

Christian Marclay, A Retrospective – Stephen Horne

Ciel variable 123 – THE POWER OF INTIMACY | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Stephen Horne | Artists: Christian Marclay

[Summer 2023] By Stephen Horne Centre Pompidou, Paris 16.11.2022 — 22.02.2023 [Excerpt] There is a song written and performed by Paul McCartney in 1968 that provides a succinct introduction to the work and career of Swiss-American artist Christian Marclay (b. 1955). It’s simple lyric, repeated – “Why don’t we do it in the road” – […]

Angela Grauerholz, The Empty S(h)elf – Gabrielle Sarthou

Ciel variable 123 – THE POWER OF INTIMACY | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Gabrielle Sarthou | Artists: Angela Grauerholz

[Summer 2023] Gabrielle Sarthou Occurrence, Montréal 4.11.2022 — 17.12.2022 [Excerpt] Despite its title, this second iteration of Angela Grauerholz’s installation The Empty S(h)elf, presented at Galerie Occurrence in Montréal, is not at all empty: it is polymorphous and dense, at the intersection between language and image, words and thoughts. We discover it fortuitously, as we […]

Disraeli Revisited: Chronicle of an Event in Quebec Photography — Fanny Bieth

Ciel variable 123 – THE POWER OF INTIMACY | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Fanny Bieth | Artists: Claire Beaugrand-Champagne, Michel Campeau, Roger Charbonneau

[Summer 2023] By Fanny Bieth Musée McCord Stewart, Montréal 28.10.2022 — 19.02.2023 [Excerpt] Commemorating an experiment conducted fifty years ago, the exhibition Disraeli Revisited: Chronicle of an Event in Quebec Photography is the result of an extraordinary collaboration between the team at the McCord Stewart Museum and those involved in the original project. The show […]

Isabelle Hayeur, Histoires d’eau – Baptiste Grison

Ciel variable 123 – THE POWER OF INTIMACY | Exhibition reviews
Artists: Isabelle Hayeur

[Summer 2023] By Baptiste Grison Musée du Bas-Saint-Laurent, Rivière-du-Loup 14.10.2022 — 05.02.2023 [Excerpt] The Musée du Bas-Saint-Laurent (MBSL) has built its 2022–23 program of activities, exhibitions, and workshops around different environmental issues. A high point is undoubtedly the exhibition Histoires d’eau, a survey of recent works by the Lanaudière-based photographer Isabelle Hayeur. It is worth […]

Michel Huneault Incipit – COVID-19 — Philippe Depairon

Ciel variable 123 – THE POWER OF INTIMACY | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Philippe Depairon | Artists: Michel Huneault

[Summer 2023] By Philippe Depairon Musée McCord Stewart, Montréal 16.09.2022 — 22.01.2023 [Excerpt] How do we remember the recent COVID-19 pandemic? And what do we remember? In a recent issue of Ciel variable, Michel Hardy-Vallée underlined, behind the Legault government’s injunction to take walks (for our health) and stay home (for the health of others), […]

Jessica Eaton, Mariphasa Lupine Lumina — Daniel Fiset

Ciel variable 123 – THE POWER OF INTIMACY | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Daniel Fiset | Artists: Jessica Eaton

[Summer 2023] By Daniel Fiset Bradley Ertaskiran, Montréal 10.11.2022 — 17.12.2022 [Excerpt] Although Jessica Eaton is best known for her photographic series that establish a formal dialogue between geometric abstraction and modernist painting, a new body of work presented in late 2022 at Galerie Bradley Ertaskiran introduced an entirely unexpected motif into her practice. The […]

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 | 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 […]

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

Ciel variable 120 - FIGURES OF AFFIRMATION | Exhibition reviews

[Été 2022] Par Daniel Roy MAC VAL Musée d’art contemporain du Val-de-Marne, Vitry-sur-Seine 6.06.2021 — 9.01.2022 [Extrait]

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, Les tableaux réunis — Yannick Marcoux

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

Yannick Marcoux examines Martin Désilets’s Les tableaux réunis, an exhibition exploring photography, accumulation, memory, and the boundaries between image and abstraction.

Carlos Ferrand Zavala, Resistencia. Perú, 1970–1975 — Alexis Desgagnés

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

Alexis Desgagnés examines Carlos Ferrand Zavala’s Resistencia. Perú, 1970–1975, an exhibition revisiting his photographs and films on Peru’s social realities.

Catherine Bodmer, Synonymes — Emmanuelle Choquette

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

Emmanuelle Choquette examines Catherine Bodmer’s Synonyms, an exhibition where photography and text explore relationships between nature, language, and perception.

Françoise Sullivan, The 1970s — Didier Morelli

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

Didier Morelli examines Françoise Sullivan: The 1970s, an exhibition revealing the artist’s experiments with photography, performance, video, and conceptual art.

Lorenza Böttner, Requiem for the Norm — Fanny Bieth

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

Fanny Bieth examines Lorenza Böttner’s Requiem for the Norm, an exhibition celebrating a free and diverse body through photography, performance, and visual arts.

Dawit L. Petros, Gaps, holes, fissures, and frictions — Claudia Polledri

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

Claudia Polledri examines Dawit L. Petros’s Gaps, holes, fissures, and frictions, an exhibition exploring colonial histories, archives, and migratory trajectories.

Sylvie Readman, Denis Rioux — Mona Hakim

Ciel variable 119 - AGAINST NATURE | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Mona Hakim | Artists: Denis Rioux, Sylvie Readman

Mona Hakim examines Porosities, an exhibition by Sylvie Readman and Denis Rioux exploring photographic materiality, perception, and our relationship with the living world.