Exhibition reviews

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 […]

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