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

[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 | 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

[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 — 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, […]

Sylvie Readman, Denis Rioux — Mona Hakim

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

[Winter 2022] Galerie Laroche/Joncas, Montréal 8.09.2021 — 9.10.2021 By Mona Hakim [Excerpt] Presented in a single exhibition space and arranged facing each other, the photographs of Sylvie Readman and Denis Rioux highlight their common concern with the issues and properties of the photographic language within which the primary conditions of the visual and conceptual experience […]

Dawoud Bey — Ariane Noël de Tilly

Ciel variable 119 - AGAINST NATURE | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Ariane Noël de Tilly | Artists: Dawoud Bey

[Winter 2022] Whitney Museum of American Art, New York 17.04.2021 — 3.10.2021 By Ariane Noël de Tilly [Excerpt] Since the very inception of his photographic career, Dawoud Bey has pointed his lens toward people and, especially, marginalized communities. The retrospective of his work presented at the Whitney Museum of American Art highlighted the ethical dimension […]

Érika Nimis, Mutants — Christian Roy

Ciel variable 118 - EXHIBITING PHOTOGRAPHY | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Christian Roy | Artists: Érika Nimis

[Fall 2021] Mutants Centre des arts actuels Skol 6.03.2021 — 10.04.2021 By Christian Roy [Excerpt] Érika Nimis, a historian of Africa and its photographic tradition, which she has often covered in Ciel variable, also produces photographic essays about traces of places and abandoned objects. The body of work exhibited at Centre Skol results from an […]

Yann Pocreau, Impermanencies — Daniel Roy

Ciel variable 118 - EXHIBITING PHOTOGRAPHY | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Daniel Roy | Artists: Yann Pocreau

[Fall 2021] Les Impermanents Musée des beaux­arts de Montréal 10.04.2021 — 1.08.2021 By Daniel Roy [Excerpt] Continuing his reflections on the materiality of light, Yann Pocreau presented a corpus of brand-new works at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, the result of research conducted during residencies at the Fonderie Darling (2016–18) and the Mont-Mégantic Observatory […]

Chuck Samuels, Becoming Photography — Sylvain Campeau

Ciel variable 118 - EXHIBITING PHOTOGRAPHY | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Sylvain Campeau | Artists: Chuck Samuels

[Fall 2021] Expression, centre d’exposition de Saint­-Hyacinthe 27.02.2021 — 25.04.2021 Plein sud, centre d’exposition en art actuel à Longueuil 13.03.2021 — 24.04.2021 By Sylvain Campeau [Excerpt] A project deployed in two venues and one monograph, Becoming Photography brings together corpuses produced between 1991 and 2020. At Plein sud are series that have been exhibited before, […]

Capture Photography Festival 2021 — Karen Henry

Ciel variable 118 - EXHIBITING PHOTOGRAPHY | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Karen Henry

[Fall 2021] Capture Photography Festival 2021 Vancouver April 1–30, 2021 By Karen Henry [Excerpt] It’s impossible to review the Capture festival, a rambling aggregation of events in Vancouver that celebrate photography, as a whole. Here, I focus on public art billboards and the major festival commission. Billboards are of a scale to command attention in […]

Paul Walde, Requiem for a Glacier — Reilley Bishop-Stall

Ciel variable 118 - EXHIBITING PHOTOGRAPHY | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Reilley Bishop-Stall | Artists: Paul Walde

[Fall 2021] Requiem for a Glacier Montreal Museum of Fine Arts March 10, 2021–February 27, 2022 By Reilley Bishop-Stall [Excerpt] Paul Walde’s four ­movement oratorio Requiem for a Glacier was originally performed in July, 2013 on a glacier in British Columbia’s Jumbo Valley – or Qat’muk, as it is known by the Ktunaxa First Nation, […]

Emanuel Licha, zo reken — André Lavoie

Ciel variable 118 - EXHIBITING PHOTOGRAPHY | Exhibition reviews
Authors: André Lavoie | Artists: Emanuel Licha

[Fall 2021] Film documentaire, 2021, 85 minutes, français et créole haïtien By André Lavoie [Excerpt] It is said that truth is the first casualty of war. That seems inevitable, as those who wage war often base their actions on lies and feed on propaganda to justify its necessity. War is also staged – hence the […]

Alejandro G. Iñárritu, Carne y Arena — Jean Gagnon

Ciel variable 118 - EXHIBITING PHOTOGRAPHY | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Jean Gagnon | Artists: Alejandro G. Iñárritu

[Fall 2021] Arsenal art contemporain 17.03.2021 — 15.08.2021 By Jean Gagnon [Excerpt] It has long been possible to experience virtual reality works in Montreal,1 and in spring 2021 a “must-see”2 was Carne y Arena (Virtually Present, Physically Invisible) (2017) by Oscar-winning filmmaker Alejandro G. Iñárritu.3 The presentation in Montreal was thanks to the efforts of […]

Meryl McMaster, There Once Was A Song — Stéphanie Hornstein

Ciel variable 118 - EXHIBITING PHOTOGRAPHY | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Stéphanie Hornstein | Artists: Meryl McMaster

[Fall 2021] Occurrence, espace d’art et d’essai McCord Museum, Montreal April 2 — August 15, 2021 By Stéphanie Hornstein [Excerpt] Starlings have pride of place in Meryl McMaster’s heart. In 2013, she produced a photographic triptych, Murmur, that shows a young woman, the artist herself, gently twirling within a swarm of paper starlings. Grounded in […]

Richard Ibghy & Marilou Lemmens, Querelle entre deux puces pour savoir à qui appartient le chien sur lequel elles vivent — Noémie Fortin

Ciel variable 117 - SHIFTED | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Noémie Fortin | Artists: Richard Ibghy & Marilou Lemmens

[Summer 2021] Richard Ibghy & Marilou Lemmens Querelle entre deux puces pour savoir à qui appartient le chien sur lequel elles vivent Fondation Grantham pour l’art et l’environnement, Saint-Edmond-de-Grantham 27.09.2020 — 26.06.2021 Par Noémie Fortin [Excerpt] Presented at the Grantham Foundation for the Arts and the Environment, the exhibition Querelle entre deux puces pour savoir […]

John Akomfrah, Vertigo Sea — Jill Glessing

Ciel variable 117 - SHIFTED | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Jill Glessing | Artists: John Akomfrah

[Summer 2021] John Akomfrah Vertigo Sea The Design Exchange Trading Floor, Nuit Blanche, Toronto 2.10.2016 Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal 10.02.2021 – 4.04.2021 By Jill Glessing [Excerpt] The sea, wild and wet, the womb that bore us, from which we slithered eons ago. We return to that birthplace – for crossings, sustenance, profit, and pleasure. […]

Sara A. Tremblay — Paule Mackrous

Ciel variable 117 - SHIFTED | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Paule Mackrous | Artists: Sara A. Tremblay

[Summer 2021] Tout t’empêche Centre d’exposition de l’Université de Montréal, en ligne / online By Paule Mackrous While we are recluses in our regions, neighbourhoods, and homes, the pandemic has shrunk the parameters of our living environment, and we are constantly confronted with its limits. It’s what author Cristina Comencini has called “a test of […]

Gagnon-Forest, Séquence aérienne — Élisabeth Recurt

Ciel variable 117 - SHIFTED | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Élisabeth Recurt | Artists: Gagnon-Forest

[Summer 2021] Maison de la culture Claude-Léveillée, Montréal 13.12.2020 — 14.02.2021 Par Élisabeth Recurt [Extrait] Here, the duo of Gagnon-Forest (Mathieu Gagnon and Mathilde Forest) presents a series of six large-format photographs (inkjet prints on film, backlit), articulated and paced by three dualities. Installed in the large windows on the lateral wall of Maison de […]

Stan Douglas, Penn Station’s Half Century — Stefan Zebrowski-Rubin

Ciel variable 117 - SHIFTED | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Stefan Zebrowski-Rubin | Artists: Stan Douglas

February 19, 2022 [originally published in CV117 in Summer 2021 ] — Beams of light shine across an abandoned hall stacked with suitcases. Groups of men assemble at various points as a woman, clipboard in hand, takes inventory by the marble-cladded information desk. In the foreground, a Victorian-style lamppost lies on its side…

Isabelle Hayeur, (D)énoncer — Jean De Julio-Paquin

Ciel variable 117 - SHIFTED | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Jean De Julio-Paquin | Artists: Isabelle Hayeur

[Summer 2021] (D)énoncer Plein sud, centre d’exposition en art actuel, Longueuil 12.09.2020 — 27.02.2021 Salle Alfred-Pellan de la Maison des arts de Laval 13.09.2020 — 7.03.2021 Galerie d’art Antoine-Sirois de l’Université de Sherbrooke 28.10.2020 — 13.03.2021 By Jean De Julio-Paquin To begin with, the triple exhibition of work by multidisciplinary artist Isabelle Hayeur, (D)énoncer, was […]

Sandra Brewster — Érika Nimis

Ciel variable 117 - SHIFTED | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Erika Nimis | Artists: Sandra Brewster

[Summer 2021] Works from series: Smith, Blur; Video: Walk on by Optica, un centre d’art contemporain, Montréal 16.02.2021 — 03.04.2021 By Érika Nimis After long months of forced restraint, what a pleasure it is to return to visiting visual arts venues in person! I tested out this pleasure by going to Optica to see Toronto […]

Judith Bellavance — Mona Hakim

Ciel variable 117 - SHIFTED | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Mona Hakim | Artists: Judith Bellavance

[Summer 2021] Le goût de la durée Occurrence, espace d’art et d’essai contemporains, Montréal 15.09.2020 — 7.11.2020 Par Mona Hakim On the walls of the smallest room in Galerie Occurrence are intriguing photographs of a bare, dingy hall. Captured by photographer Judith Bellavance, the basement of a Gaspé village church seems frozen in time. Bellavance […]

Vikky Alexander, Nordic Rock — James D. Campbell

Ciel variable 116 — LANDSCAPES AS MIRRORS | Exhibition reviews
Authors: James D. Campbell | Artists: Vikky Alexander

[Winter 2021] Nordic Rock Darling Foundry, Montreal February 27–August 29, 2020 By James D. Campbell [Excerpt] Vikky Alexander’s Nordic Rock is a rare extravaganza of the literal and the metaphorical, the real and the surreal. It provokes a counterpoint to and reappraisal of the massive scale of the imposing Darling Foundry Main Hall in which […]

Laurence Hervieux-Gosselin — Gabrielle Sarthou

Ciel variable 116 — LANDSCAPES AS MIRRORS | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Gabrielle Sarthou | Artists: Laurence Hervieux-Gosselin

[Winter 2021] This article was originally published in French only. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. Fenêtre oubliée Galerie la Castiglione chez Produit Rien, Montréal Du 3 au 26 septembre 2020 By Gabrielle Sarthou (En français seulement)   See the magazine for the complete article and more […]

Berlin Biennale für zeitgenössische Kunst — Érika Nimis

Ciel variable 116 — LANDSCAPES AS MIRRORS | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Erika Nimis

[Winter 2021] This article was originally published in French only. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. Biennale de Berlin pour l’art contemporain Du 5 septembre au 1er novembre 2020 By Érika Nimis (En français seulement)   See the magazine for the complete article and more images: Ciel […]

Bertrand Carrière — Sylvain Campeau

Ciel variable 116 — LANDSCAPES AS MIRRORS | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Sylvain Campeau | Artists: Bertrand Carrière

[Winter 2021] This article was originally published in French only. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. Dans les années – Photographies 1996–2019 Galerie d’art Antoine-Sirois de l’Université de Sherbrooke Du 8 septembre au 17 octobre 2020 By Sylvain Campeau (En français seulement)   See the magazine for […]

Photographie et société : L’Autre Amérique — Jérôme Delgado

Ciel variable 116 — LANDSCAPES AS MIRRORS | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Jérôme Delgado

[Winter 2021] This article was originally published in French only. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. Photographie et société : L’Autre Amérique Maison de la culture Claude-Léveillée, Montréal Du 26 août au 4 octobre 2020 By Jérôme Delgado (En français seulement)   See the magazine for the […]

Virginie Laganière — Nathalie Bachand

Ciel variable 116 — LANDSCAPES AS MIRRORS | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Nathalie Bachand | Artists: Virginie Laganière

[Winter 2021] This article was originally published in French only. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. Derrière l’horizon Circa art actuel, Montréal Du 8 juillet au 22 août 2020 Par Nathalie Bachand (En français seulement)   See the magazine for the complete article and more images: Ciel […]

Rachel Echenberg — Charles Guilbert

Ciel variable 116 — LANDSCAPES AS MIRRORS | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Charles Guilbert | Artists: Rachel Echenberg

[Winter 2021] This article was originally published in French only. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. Conversations avec ma famille Galerie B-312, Montréal Du 3 septembre au 3 octobre 2020 Par Charles Guilbert (En français seulement)   See the magazine for the complete article and more images: […]

Sarah Wendt et Pascal Dufaux | Alexis Bellavance — Nathalie Bachand

Ciel variable 115 - THE MARCH OF THE WORLD | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Nathalie Bachand | Artists: Alexis Bellavance, Pascal Dufaux, Sarah Wendt

[Summer 2020] This article was originally published in French only. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. Axenéo7 Du 18 septembre au 26 octobre 2019 Par Nathalie Bachand (In French only)   Acheter ce numéro 

Rencontres photographiques de Guyane | 6e édition — Sophie Bertrand

Ciel variable 115 - THE MARCH OF THE WORLD | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Sophie Bertrand | Artists: Léa Magnien

[Summer 2020] This article was originally published in French only. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. Parenthèse(s) Du 6 au 30 novembre 2019 Par Sophie Bertrand (In French only)     Acheter ce numéro

Szilasi & Szilasi — Fanny Bieth et Clément Willer

Ciel variable 115 - THE MARCH OF THE WORLD | Exhibition reviews, Recensions d'expositions
Authors: Clément Willer, Fanny Bieth | Artists: Andrea Szilasi, Gabor Szilasi

[Summer 2020] This article was originally published in French only. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. Galerie Deux Poissons, Montréal Du 17 octobre au 23 novembre 2019 Par Fanny Bieth et Clément Willer (En Français seulement)   Acheter ce numéro

Jocelyn Philibert — Sylvain Campeau

Ciel variable 115 - THE MARCH OF THE WORLD | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Sylvain Campeau | Artists: Jocelyn Philibert

[Summer 2020] This article was originally published in French only. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. Dimension Lumière EXPRESSION. Centre d’exposition de Saint-Hyacinthe Du 9 novembre 2019 au 26 janvier 2020 Par Sylvain Campeau (En Français seulement)   Acheter ce numéro

Normand Rajotte — Mona Hakim

Ciel variable 115 - THE MARCH OF THE WORLD | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Mona Hakim | Artists: Normand Rajotte

[Summer 2020] This article was originally published in French only. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. Sur les lieux La Castiglione, Montréal Du 2 octobre au 9 novembre 2019 Par Mona Hakim (En Français seulement) Acheter ce numéro

Monique Moumblow — Charles Guilbert

Ciel variable 115 - THE MARCH OF THE WORLD | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Charles Guilbert | Artists: Monique Moumblow

[Fall 2019] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. Compositions | Pale Shadows Centre VOX Du 1er novembre 2019 au 29 février 2020 By Charles Guilbert (In French only) Acheter ce numéro

Hito Steyerl, This is the future — Jill Glessing

Ciel variable 115 - THE MARCH OF THE WORLD | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Jill Glessing | Artists: Hito Steyerl

[Fall 2019] Art Gallery of Ontario October 24, 2019–February 23, 2020 By Jill Glessing Artist and cultural critic Hito Steyerl, widely recognized for her writing and video works, explores the mostly invisible relations among contemporary art, networked digital technology, and the power structures that aim to control them. In her exhibition This is the future […]

Isaac Julien — Ariane Noël de Tilly

Ciel variable 115 - THE MARCH OF THE WORLD | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Ariane Noël de Tilly | Artists: Isaac Julien

[Fall 2019] This article was originally published in French only. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. Isaac Julien Frederick Douglass: Lessons of the Hour SCAD Museum of Art, Savannah Du 3 octobre au 15 décembre 2019 By Ariane Noël de Tilly (In French only) Acheter ce numéro