Ciel variable 102 - FAR AWAY, SO CLOSE | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Erika Wicky
October 7, 2019 [originally published in CV102 in Winter 2016] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.
Ciel variable 101 - STRATA | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Adam Barbu | Artists: Andrew Wright
June 12, 2019 [originally published in CV101 in Fall 2015] — In recent years, Ottawa-based artist Andrew Wright has produced numerous bodies of work that propose new readings on the ontology of the image. In particular, Wright’s exhibition at Patrick Mikhail’s new Montreal gallery space, titled Untitled Photographic Pictures, presents a series of large-scale photographic works and two mixed-media sculptural works…
Ciel variable 101 - STRATA | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Judith Parker | Artists: Manon Labrecque
June 18, 2019 [originally published in CV101 in Fall 2015] — The artist’s body as a site for the investigation of the internal dualities of the self is the subject of a compelling exhibition of video projections, kinetic sculptures, and drawings by Montreal artist Manon Labrecque…
Ciel variable 101 - STRATA | Exhibition reviews
Authors: James D. Campbell | Artists: Alain Lefort
June 20, 2019 [originally published in CV101 in Fall 2015] — Lefort fittingly cribs his title from American author Herman Melville’s 1851 magnum opus Moby Dick: the Pequod is a fictitious nineteenth-century Nantucket whaling ship that appears in the novel as an instrument of revenge…
Ciel variable 101 - STRATA | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Michèle Cohen Hadria | Artists: Mark Lewis
June 25, 2019 [originally published in CV101 in Fall 2015] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.
Ciel variable 101 - STRATA | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Claire Moeder | Artists: Chih-Chien Wang
June 27, 2019 [originally published in CV101 in Fall 2015] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.
Ciel variable 101 - STRATA | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Vincent Brault | Artists: Sophie Calle
July 2, 2019 [originally published in CV101 in Fall 2015] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.
Ciel variable 101 - STRATA | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Alain Laframboise | Artists: Sophie Calle
July 2, 2019 [originally published in CV101 in Fall 2015] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.
Ciel variable 101 - STRATA | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Anne-Marie Proulx | Artists: Raymonde April
July 3, 2019 [originally published in CV101 in Fall 2015] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.
Ciel variable 101 - STRATA | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Vincent Lavoie | Artists: Benoit Aquin
July 29, 2019 [originally published in CV101 in Fall 2015] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.
Ciel variable 100 - REPLAY | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Mirna Boyadjian | Artists: Akram Zaatari
April 10, 2019 [originally published in CV100 in Spring 2015] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.
Ciel variable 100 - REPLAY | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Sam Cotter | Artists: Suzy Lake
April 16, 2019 [originally published in CV100 in Spring 2015] — For over forty years, Suzy Lake has been engaging with the world of representation surrounding her, creating new images to open dialogues and complicate underlying ideologies. Introducing Suzy Lake, the first major museum retrospective of her work, organized by the Art Gallery of Ontario, looks to Lake’s performative engagement with the camera from the late 1960s to the present…
Ciel variable 100 - REPLAY | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Serge Allaire | Artists: Rozenn Quéré, Yasmine Eid-Sabbagh
April 18, 2019 [originally published in CV100 in Spring 2015] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.
Ciel variable 100 - REPLAY | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Ada Ackerman | Artists: Roman Vishniac
April 23, 2019 [originally published in CV100 in Spring 2015] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.
Ciel variable 100 - REPLAY | Exhibition reviews
Authors: James D. Campbell | Artists: Kathleen Ritter
April 24, 2019 [originally published in CV100 in Spring 2015] — This captivating exhibition of work by Kathleen Ritter is aptly and enticingly titled Camoufleurs. A camoufleur was a person – usually an artist, usually a woman – who designed and installed military camouflage in one of the world wars of the last century. The term relates to all First and Second World War specialists in the art of camouflage…
Ciel variable 100 - REPLAY | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Guillaume Lafleur | Artists: James Benning
April 29, 2019 [originally published in CV100 in Spring 2015] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.
Ciel variable 100 - REPLAY | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Caroline Gagné | Artists: Pierre Bourgault
May 1, 2019 [originally published in CV100 in Spring 2015] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.
Ciel variable 100 - REPLAY | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Zoë Tousignant | Artists: Richard Mosse
May 6, 2019 [originally published in CV100 in Spring 2015] — One would have to be a seasoned cynic to be indifferent to Richard Mosse’s film installation The Enclave (2012–13). Visually, it is an impressionistic, six-screened montage of beautifully lurid hues of hot pink; politically, it reveals a heretofore unseen side of the conflict that has ravaged the Democratic Republic of Congo since 1998; and theoretically, it raises fundamental questions regarding the meaning and function of images of war…
Ciel variable 99 - HABITAT | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Sylvain Campeau | Artists: Gwenaël Bélanger
February 4, 2019 [originally published in CV99 in Winter 2015] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.
Ciel variable 99 - HABITAT | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Elisa Julia Gilmour | Artists: Harun Farocki
February 6, 2019 [originally published in CV99 in Winter 2015] — On September 17, 2014, the Ryerson Image Centre (RIC), an institution that collects, researches, and exhibits historical and contemporary lens-based imagery, opened three new exhibitions on war imagery: how it is produced, constructed, distributed, and received…
Ciel variable 99 - HABITAT | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Ada Ackerman | Artists: Julien Magre
February 11, 2019 [originally published in CV99 in Winter 2015] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.
Ciel variable 99 - HABITAT | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Johanna Mizgala
February 13, 2019 [originally published in CV99 in Winter 2015] — The Great War: The Persuasive Power of Photography contains over four hundred images, ranging from private portraits to almost-life-size enlargements of battlefields and scenes from the front. The exhibition addresses the multiple means by which photographs circulated during the war years, while at the same time underscoring the profound sense of loss and devastation…
Ciel variable 99 - HABITAT | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Charles Guilbert | Artists: Félix Dufour-Laperrière
February 18, 2019 [originally published in CV99 in Winter 2015] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.
Ciel variable 99 - HABITAT | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Stephen Horne | Artists: David Goldblatt
February 20, 2019 [originally published in CV99 in Winter 2015] — David Goldblatt has been photographing in South Africa for many decades. The acuity with which he has recorded the depths of violence and its specific character both during and after the era of apartheid rests on his observation of violence naturalized…
Ciel variable 99 - HABITAT | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Louis Cummins | Artists: Ryoji Ikeda
February 25, 2019 [originally published in CV99 in Winter 2015] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.
Ciel variable 99 - HABITAT | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Karen Henry | Artists: Kelly Lycan
February 27, 2019 [originally published in CV99 in Winter 2015] — The title of Kelly Lycan’s show, Underglow, incorporates her interest in consumer culture, photography, high art, and cultures of display. Lycan uses the connotations of luminous detailing in car culture, cosmetic techniques that add shimmering radiance, and, in general, the use of light to emphasize form to animate the role of light in photography…
Ciel variable 98 – ABSTRACTION | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Nicolas Mavrikakis | Artists: Caroline Hayeur
Novembre 26, 2018 [originally published in CV98 in Fall 2014] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.
Ciel variable 98 – ABSTRACTION | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Sylvain Campeau | Artists: Bettina Hoffmann
Novembre 28, 2018 [originally published in CV98 in Fall 2014] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.
Ciel variable 98 – ABSTRACTION | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Line Dezainde | Artists: Jacky Georges Lafargue, Louis Couturier
December 3, 2018 [originally published in CV98 in Fall 2014] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.
Ciel variable 98 – ABSTRACTION | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Mirna Boyadjian | Artists: Émile Béchard
December 5, 2018 [originally published in CV98 in Fall 2014] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.
Ciel variable 98 – ABSTRACTION | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Sonia Pelletier | Artists: Juan Betancurth, Nancy Davenport, Søren Lose
December 10, 2018 [originally published in CV98 in Fall 2014] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.
Ciel variable 98 – ABSTRACTION | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Véronique Leblanc | Artists: Darlene Laponse, Jean-Maxime Dufresne, Mark Boulos, Virginie Laganière
December 12, 2018 [originally published in CV98 in Fall 2014] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.
Ciel variable 98 – ABSTRACTION | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Jill Glessing
December 17, 2018 [originally published in CV98 in Fall 2014] — The rich-text title CounterIntelligence that introduces an exhibition, writings, workshop, and film screenings considers two cultural nodes and production modes – art and military activity. The project’s formal and thematic eclecticism befits the Berlin-based Canadian curator, Charles Stankievech, whose own work traverses the fields of sound and visual art, writing, and publishing…
Ciel variable 97 - PORTRAIT GALLERY | Exhibition reviews
Authors: John K. Grande | Artists: Michael Flomen
September 7, 2018 [originally published in CV97 in Spring 2014] — The origins of camera-less photography go back to the beginnings of photography, with William Henry Fox Talbot’s photogenic drawings, the process for which he described in 1839: “It is a little bit of magic realized: – of natural magic. You make the powers of nature work for you, and no wonder that your work is well and quickly done…”
Ciel variable 97 - PORTRAIT GALLERY | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Julie Gagné | Artists: Yan Giguère
September 12, 2018 [originally published in CV97 in Spring 2014] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.
Ciel variable 97 - PORTRAIT GALLERY | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Pierre Dessureault | Artists: Claire Beaugrand-Champagne
September 14, 2018 [originally published in CV97 in Spring 2014] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.
Ciel variable 97 - PORTRAIT GALLERY | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Ivan Tanzer | Artists: Alan Michelson
September 17, 2018 [originally published in CV97 in Spring 2014] — Although he did not set out to organize a comprehensive history of activism in Aboriginal art, guest curator and National Visiting Trudeau Fellow Steve Loft has mounted a significant exhibition that strengthens the living discourse surrounding Aboriginal art production…
Ciel variable 97 - PORTRAIT GALLERY | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Sonia Pelletier | Artists: Jocelyne Alloucherie, Yann Pocreau
September 19, 2018 [originally published in CV97 in Spring 2014] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.
Ciel variable 97 - PORTRAIT GALLERY | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Franck Michel | Artists: Raymond Depardon
September 24, 2018 [originally published in CV97 in Spring 2014] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.
Ciel variable 97 - PORTRAIT GALLERY | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Robert Evans | Artists: Laura Letinsky
September 26, 2018 [originally published in CV97 in Spring 2014] — For over a decade, Winnipeg-born photographer Laura Letinsky has pursued still-life photography as a means to explore social structures and the world around us. These works are drawn from five series and range from early compositions that owe obvious debts to the traditional still-life genre to more recent images that challenge the viewer’s understanding of picture space and the nature of photographic representation…
Ciel variable 97 - PORTRAIT GALLERY | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Sylvain Campeau | Artists: Lorraine Gilbert
October 1, 2018 [originally published in CV97 in Spring 2014] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.
Ciel variable 97 - PORTRAIT GALLERY | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Mona Hakim | Artists: Michel Lamothe
October 3, 2018 [originally published in CV97 in Spring 2014] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.
Ciel variable 97 - PORTRAIT GALLERY | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Karen Henry | Artists: Antoni Muntadas
October 10, 2018 [originally published in CV97 in Spring 2014] — Warning: Perception Requires Involvement, in bold white text on a red background, covers the wall of the Canada Line transit station in downtown Vancouver. It is both a statement about the commitment needed to understand something and a public warning about the tendency these days to limit the onslaught of information to what can be gleaned in a ten-second media clip or an advertising image…
Ciel variable 97 - PORTRAIT GALLERY | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Pierre Rannou | Artists: Dominique Blain
October 12, 2018 [originally published in CV97 in Spring 2014] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.
Ciel variable 97 - PORTRAIT GALLERY | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Louis Cummins | Artists: Michel Campeau, Robert Burley
October 15, 2018 [originally published in CV97 in Spring 2014] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.
Ciel variable 96 – PERFORMING FOR THE IMAGE | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Sylvain Campeau | Artists: Thomas Demand
June 27, 2018 [originally published in CV96 in Winter 2014] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.
Ciel variable 96 – PERFORMING FOR THE IMAGE | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Heather White | Artists: Alison Craighead, Jon Thomson, Marika Dermineur, Stéphane Degoutin
July 3, 2018 [originally published in CV96 in Winter 2014] — First in the sightline for those entering Googleheim, a group show curated by Horea Avram at Interaccess in Toronto: a wireless mouse on a plinth. It might have been a monument to audience engagement – a succinct overture to a show invested in dialogue between the museum’s interest in artefacts and the Internet’s provision of access. It wasn’t that, though; interaction was not particularly celebrated…
Ciel variable 96 – PERFORMING FOR THE IMAGE | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Sonia Pelletier | Artists: Nathalie Bujold
July 4, 2018 [originally published in French in CV96 in Winter 2014] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.
Ciel variable 96 – PERFORMING FOR THE IMAGE | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Bernard Schütze | Artists: Richard Deschênes
July 30, 2018 [originally published in CV96 in Winter 2014] — Richard Deschênes’s exhibition De la piscine aux verts is composed of pared-down images – made entirely of cut-out and recombined press photographs – that shift among painting, collage, photography, and text. This visual and semiotic dynamic thwarts any attempt to definitely qualify them in a single category…
Ciel variable 96 – PERFORMING FOR THE IMAGE | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Erika Nimis | Artists: Sven Augustijnen
August 1, 2018 [originally published in French in CV96 in Winter 2014] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.
Ciel variable 96 – PERFORMING FOR THE IMAGE | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Sylvain Campeau | Artists: Gabriel Coutu-Dumont
August 6, 2018 [originally published in French in CV96 in Winter 2014] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.
Ciel variable 95 – CYBER / ESPACE / PUBLIC | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Anne Pilorget | Artists: Jessica Auer
April 16, 2018 [originally published in French in CV95 in Fall 2013] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.
Ciel variable 95 – CYBER / ESPACE / PUBLIC | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Emmanuel Simard | Artists: Nicolas Lévesque, Stéphane Pichard
April 18, 2018 [originally published in French in CV95 in Fall 2013] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.
Ciel variable 95 – CYBER / ESPACE / PUBLIC | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Sonia Pelletier | Artists: Chih-Chien Wang
April 23, 2018 [originally published in French in CV95 in Fall 2013] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.
Ciel variable 95 – CYBER / ESPACE / PUBLIC | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Christian Roy | Artists: Isabelle Hayeur
April 25, 2018 [originally published in French in CV95 in Fall 2013] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.
Ciel variable 95 – CYBER / ESPACE / PUBLIC | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Zoë Tousignant | Artists: Alain Pratte
April 30, 2018 [originally published in CV95 in Fall 2013] — Obituaries, I am told, become a part of everyday life once you reach a certain age. At one point, these public announcements of death made in local newspapers on a daily or weekly basis take on more significance as you begin to recognize, either literally or figuratively, the names and faces of those who have died. Regularly reading obituaries is a way to both defy and ease oneself into death…
Ciel variable 95 – CYBER / ESPACE / PUBLIC | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Charles Guilbert | Artists: Sébastien Cliche
May 2, 2018 [originally published in French in CV95 in Fall 2013] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.
Ciel variable 95 – CYBER / ESPACE / PUBLIC | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Laurent Vernet | Artists: Alfredo Jaar
May 7, 2018 [originally published in French in CV95 in Fall 2013] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.
Ciel variable 94 – PUBLIC ART | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Andrea Carson | Artists: Marie-Hélène Cousineau, Michael Snow
February 12, 2018 [originally published in CV94 in Spring 2013] — Curator Peggy Gale and Ryerson Image Centre director Doina Popescu smartly chose to inaugurate Ryerson University’s new building and gallery with an exhibition specifically about “The Archive.” In this case, the focus was the world-renowned Black Star Collection, comprising over 290,000 photojournalistic prints, which had been donated anonymously to Ryerson University in 2005.
Ciel variable 94 – PUBLIC ART | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Christelle Proulx | Artists: Charles-Antoine Blais-Métivier, Serge-Olivier Rondeau
February 14, 2018 [originally published in French in CV94 in Spring 2013] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.
Ciel variable 94 – PUBLIC ART | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Gentiane La France | Artists: Birthe Piontek
February 19, 2018 [originally published in French in CV94 in Spring 2013] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.
Ciel variable 94 – PUBLIC ART | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Stephen Horne | Artists: Lorna Bauer
February 21, 2018 [originally published in CV94 in Spring 2013] — The title of Lorna Bauer’s exhibition at Galerie Nicolas Robert offers a simple paradigm for what she explores with her series of photographs. Bauer initially sets us up for a documentary-style tour of some storefronts in New York’s celebrated garment district. Storefronts have been a tried-and-true subject for photographers since the early days of the technology…
Ciel variable 94 – PUBLIC ART | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Sylvain Campeau | Artists: Alain Laframboise
February 26, 2018 [originally published in French in CV94 in Spring 2013] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.
Ciel variable 94 – PUBLIC ART | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Manon Tourigny | Artists: Jacynthe Carrier
February 28, 2018 [originally published in French in CV94 in Spring 2013] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.
Ciel variable 94 – PUBLIC ART | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Pierre Rannou | Artists: Robert Duchesnay
March 5, 2018 [originally published in French in CV94 in Spring 2013] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.
Ciel variable 94 – PUBLIC ART | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Jérôme Delgado | Artists: Caroline Hayeur, Jean-François Leblanc
March 7, 2018 [originally published in French in CV94 in Spring 2013] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.
Ciel variable 94 – PUBLIC ART | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Anne-Marie St-Jean Aubre | Artists: Milutin Gubash
March 12, 2018 [originally published in French in CV94 in Spring 2013] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.
Ciel variable 93 – FORENSICS | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Catherine Lebel Ouellet | Artists: Ivan Binet
November 15, 2017 [originally published in French in CV93 in Winter 2013] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.
Ciel variable 93 – FORENSICS | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Guy Sioui Durand | Artists: Edward Curtis
November 20, 2017 [originally published in French in CV93 in Winter 2013] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.
Ciel variable 93 – FORENSICS | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Eloi Desjardins | Artists: Larry Clark
November 22, 2017 [originally published in French in CV93 in Winter 2013] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.
Ciel variable 93 – FORENSICS | Exhibition reviews
Authors: John K. Grande | Artists: Berenice Abbott
November 27, 2017 [originally published in CV93 in Winter 2013] — Toronto, being such an architectural and photographic city, seems the perfect venue for a Berenice Abbott show. In collaboration with the Jeu de Paume in Paris, Toronto’s Ryerson Image Centre mounted a fine, comprehensive survey exhibition of Abbott’s life in photography. Early on, Abbott got to know Marcel Duchamp and Man Ray in Greenwich Village, New York, before heading for Paris to become Man Ray’s apprentice and assistant…
Ciel variable 93 – FORENSICS | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Serge Allaire | Artists: Luc Delahaye, Simon Norfolk
November 29, 2017 [originally published in French in CV93 in Winter 2013] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.
Ciel variable 93 – FORENSICS | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Sonia Pelletier | Artists: Nicolas Baier
December 4, 2017 [originally published in French in CV93 in Winter 2013] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.
Ciel variable 93 – FORENSICS | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Pierre Rannou | Artists: Jan Švankmajer, Melanie Gilligann
December 6, 2017 [originally published in French in CV93 in Winter 2013] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.
Ciel variable 93 – FORENSICS | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Julien Champagne | Artists: Ryoji Ikeda
December 11, 2017 [originally published in French in CV93 in Winter 2013] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.
Ciel variable 92 – TRUE NORTH | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Dan Antonat | Artists: Linda-Marlena Bucholtz Ross
September 11, 2017 [originally published in French in CV92 in Fall 2012] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.
Ciel variable 92 – TRUE NORTH | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Sylvain Campeau | Artists: Martin Désilets
September 13, 2017 [originally published in French in CV92 in Fall 2012] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.
Ciel variable 92 – TRUE NORTH | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Catherine Lebel Ouellet | Artists: Emmanuel Galland, Jon Rafman
September 18, 2017 [originally published in French in CV92 in Fall 2012] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.
Ciel variable 92 – TRUE NORTH | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Mona Hakim | Artists: Pierre Blache
September 21, 2017 [originally published in French in CV92 in Fall 2012] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.
Ciel variable 92 – TRUE NORTH | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Zoë Tousignant | Artists: Donigan Cumming, Matthieu Brouillard
September 26, 2017 [originally published in CV92 in Fall 2012] — Curated by Erin Silver, this bilingually (and cleverly) titled exhibition juxtaposed works by Matthieu Brouillard and Donigan Cumming, two artists who, although they are separated by a generation and consequently possess different measures of experience, are both well known to the Montreal art scene. The act of juxtaposition is, in itself, a strong curatorial statement…
Ciel variable 92 – TRUE NORTH | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Hélène Brunet Neumann | Artists: Patrice Duhamel
September 28, 2017 [originally published in French in CV92 in Fall 2012] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.
Ciel variable 92 – TRUE NORTH | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Caroline Bem | Artists: Jeremy Borsos
October 2, 2017 [originally published in French in CV92 in Fall 2012] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.
Ciel variable 92 – TRUE NORTH | Exhibition reviews
Authors: James D. Campbell | Artists: Marisa Portolese
October 4, 2017 [originally published in CV92 in Fall 2012] — UMA, Montreal’s estimable Maison de l’image et de la photographie, has taken a valuable and highly laudatory initiative in seeking out vacant commercial spaces throughout Montreal and installing photographic works in their windows. What was once a forlorn blank slate of the inner city becomes a vibrant forum for the photographic image. The works remain on view until the spaces are rented or sold…
Ciel variable 92 – TRUE NORTH | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Louis Cummins | Artists: Christian Marclay
October 2, 2017 [originally published in French in CV92 in Fall 2012] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.
Ciel variable 91 – OUR WORLD | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Sylvain Campeau | Artists: Lynne Marsh
June 21, 2017 [originally published in French in CV91 in Spring 2012] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.
Ciel variable 91 – OUR WORLD | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Eloi Desjardins | Artists: Adad Hannah
June 27, 2017 [originally published in French in CV91 in Spring 2012] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.
Ciel variable 91 – OUR WORLD | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Isa Tousignant | Artists: Normand Rajotte
June 28, 2017 [originally published in CV91 in Spring 2012] — Every summer until we were teenagers, my sister and I spent three entire months running like wild things through the dense forest of the Laurentians. With our two neighbour friends and a borrowed husky dog, we explored every nook, cranny, brook, and blueberry bush of a stretch of about two kilometres around our cottage all day, every day. They were some of my favourite times, times of excitement, serenity, and free-spiritedness that I’ve attempted to re-create since – with only a modicum of success.
Ciel variable 91 – OUR WORLD | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Louis Cummins | Artists: Bernardino Femminielli, Philippe Hamelin
July 4, 2017 [originally published in French in CV91 in Spring 2012] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.
Ciel variable 91 – OUR WORLD | Exhibition reviews
Authors: John K. Grande
July 6, 2017 [originally published in CV91 in Spring 2012] — The landscape tradition in North American photography extends back into the colonial era. In “Songs of the Future,” photography is an instrument that documents the unfolding of an industrial heritage. Some of the flavour of this show is akin to Gordon Lightfoot’s song Canadian Railway Trilogy, but, sadly, no images of Chinese or Irish workers or of Sir William van Horne figure in it.
Ciel variable 91 – OUR WORLD | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Alexis Desgagnés | Artists: Edward Steichen
July 31, 2017 [originally published in CV91 in Spring 2012] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.
Ciel variable 91 – OUR WORLD | Exhibition reviews
Authors: James D. Campbell | Artists: Scott Chandler
August 2, 2017 [originally published in CV91 in Spring 2012] — Scott Chandler’s recent work opens a window on a place and a time unknown to us. With an “under-the-radar” documentary ethic and his cumbersome camera equipment, he travelled to the Brazilian Amazon to photograph eloquent ruins hidden for generations from the outside world.
Ciel variable 91 – OUR WORLD | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Dominique Fontaine
August 7, 2017 [originally published in CV91 in Spring 2012] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.
Ciel variable 90 – COLLABORATIONS | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Johanna Mizgala | Artists: Boris Mikhailov
April 18, 2017 [originally published in CV90 in Winter 2012] — During the Soviet era, it was unlawful to photograph anything that contradicted the reigning political ideology. As images were seen to be an extremely forceful argument to support the cause, anything that might show signs of rust on the well-oiled machine would not be tolerated. The negation of an outlet for visual evidence to the contrary of the accepted narrative attests to the very power of the documentary photograph, for it bears silence witness when it is too dangerous to speak the truth.
Ciel variable 90 – COLLABORATIONS | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Sandra Fillion | Artists: Bertrand Carrière
April 19, 2017 [originally published in French in CV90 in Winter 2012] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.
Ciel variable 90 – COLLABORATIONS | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Jen Hutton | Artists: Guy Tillim
April 24, 2017 [originally published in CV90 in Winter 2012] — Guy Tillim’s sizable exhibition (initially organized by the Museum of Contemporary Photo at Columbia College in Chicago) at the Design Exchange was a provocative inclusion in 2011’s Scotiabank contact Festival. The title of the exhibition evokes the spirit of Patrice Lumumba, a staunch supporter of African nationalism and the first elected prime minister of the Congo after it gained independence from Belgium in June 1960…
Ciel variable 90 – COLLABORATIONS | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Barbara Garant
April 26, 2017 [originally published in French in CV90 in Winter 2012] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.
Ciel variable 90 – COLLABORATIONS | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Zoë Tousignant | Artists: André Cornellier
May 1, 2017 [originally published in CV90 in Winter 2012] — Two photographic panoramas evocative of nineteenth-century popular entertainment were on view at the McCord Museum of Canadian History. The first was a panoramic vista made by the Wm. Notman & Son studio in 1896. The larger of the two, titled The Great Mural, was created by photographer André Cornellier in 1996, exactly a century later. Both show a 360-degree bird’s-eye (or God’s-eye) view of Montreal, as seen from the southwest…
Ciel variable 90 – COLLABORATIONS | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Nicolas Mavrikakis | Artists: Emmanuelle Léonard
May 3, 2017 [originally published in French in CV90 in Winter 2012] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.
Ciel variable 90 – COLLABORATIONS | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Sholem Krishtalka | Artists: Suzy Lake
May 8, 2017 [originally published in CV90 in Winter 2012] — In general, the art world is not kind to older women artists. Nan Goldin recently gave an interview in which she was brutally frank on the subject. She remarked that three-quarters of the art world wants her dead; her work has changed, but the market would rather have the Nan of yore: documents of seedy underbellies and demi-mondes. Now that she has the life perspective of a woman in her sixties, her hard-won ease does not square with the woman the art world wants her to be. Suzy Lake has made this harsh truth the core of her work. But then again, this is not a recent development…
Ciel variable 90 – COLLABORATIONS | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Jean Lauzon
May 10, 2017 [originally published in French in CV90 in Winter 2012] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.
Ciel variable 90 – COLLABORATIONS | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Stephen Horne
May 15, 2017 [originally published in CV90 in Winter 2012] — The fourty-second edition of Les Rencontres d’Arles adopted the challenge of exploring the image economy, as well as photography’s relationship with the World Wide Web and with social networks, within the ambit of forty-seven diverse exhibitions. “From Here On,” the centrepiece exhibition at the Rencontres, presented photography in the context of the Web, the “digital revolution,” and how they circulate images.
Ciel variable 89 - PLACES | Exhibition reviews
Authors: John K. Grande | Artists: Wang Qingsong
February 2, 2017 [originally published in CV89 in Fall 2011] — Wang Qingsong’s photo scenarios focus on the ambiguities of China’s changing cultural identity and internal clash of ideologies. Pick Up the Pen, Fight to the End (1997) mimics a late Cultural Revolution poster, Take Up the Struggle of Polemics and Struggle to the End (1975), also on view. We see a girl wearing a Young Pioneers red scarf; Mao’s Little Red Book is on the table.
Ciel variable 89 - PLACES | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Sheena Ellison | Artists: Wanda Koop
February 7, 2017 [originally published in CV89 in Fall 2011] — “Wanda Koop: On the Edge of Experience” is a major attraction of the Prairie Scene festival, the fifth presentation of this biannual event organized by the National Arts Centre in Ottawa to showcase Canadian regional art scenes. Koop’s show, a mid-career retrospective of sorts, consists of four chronologically arranged sections and offers a sampling from eight of the artist’s many series.
Ciel variable 89 - PLACES | Exhibition reviews
Authors: James D. Campbell | Artists: Chih-Chien Wang
February 9, 2017 [originally published in CV89 in Fall 2011] — In Short Sentences, an aptly titled show of recent photographic and video work, Chih-Chien Wang offers a moving photographic journey that is also a poetic reverie on words and things, life and death. The show is fittingly bracketed by an image of the artist’s son asleep, and another of his son being breastfed by his partner, Yushan. In the former, Shaore Lies on Futon, a photograph of his son lying prone on a futon in deep sleep, Wang evokes the fragility of young life.
Ciel variable 89 - PLACES | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Virginie Doré Lemonde | Artists: Fiona Tan
February 14, 2017 [originally published in French in CV89 in Fall 2011] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.
Ciel variable 89 - PLACES | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Elizabeth Kalbfleisch | Artists: Greg Staats
February 16, 2017 [originally published in CV89 in Fall 2011] — Grief and loss are guiding principles in Greg Staats’s exhibition “Condolence,” but so, too, are more complex notions of alliance and reconciliation. The exhibition, co-presented by Oboro and Articule galleries and split between these two sites, offers Montrealers rare access to the work of an artist whose works are not often seen in this city.
Ciel variable 89 - PLACES | Exhibition reviews
Authors: John K. Grande | Artists: Adam Fuss, Susan Derges
February 21, 2017 [originally published in CV89 in Fall 2011] — “Shadow Catchers” takes off from the tradition of camera-less photography initiated by William Henry Fox-Talbot, whose photogenic drawings, first displayed to the public in 1839, preceded photography with a camera – a “little bit of magic realized,” as he put it. And we sense his influence on photographers who followed, such as Christian Schad, Lucia Moholy, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, and Man Ray, whose photogenic drawings…
Ciel variable 89 - PLACES | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Anja Bock | Artists: Pascal Grandmaison
February 23, 2017 [originally published in CV89 in Fall 2011] — Blue-tinged icebergs? Handmade plaster sculptures? The sleek, cool signature of Pascal Grandmaison is hard to discern when we first enter his recent exhibition at Galerie René Blouin. His new works hold several surprises: while they continue his investigation of the mediated photographic act, the figure-ground relationship, and the representation of the invisible, the three works included here are rich in metaphor, melancholy, and artistic modesty.
Ciel variable 89 - PLACES | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Sylvain Campeau | Artists: Claude-Philippe Benoît
February 28, 2017 [originally published in French in CV89 in Fall 2011] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.
Ciel variable 89 - PLACES | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Robin Simpson | Artists: Patrick Ward
March 2, 2017 [originally published in CV89 in Fall 2011] — With Monologue, Patrick Ward has skilfully edited together a pool of handheld footage culled from video-sharing Web sites. In silence, a single and anonymous viewpoint scans, probes, and travels through a labyrinthine interior. As the viewer follows, ambling down dark halls, peering into basements, moving from room to room, an impossible ruin begins to take form. Ward’s exhibition is the first part of Skol’s novel thematic program, Unknown Artist.
Ciel variable 88 - FACES | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Fiona Wright | Artists: Terrance Houle
November 8, 2016 [originally published in Spring 2011] — At the opening for Terrance Houle’s solo show “givn’r” on September, most people mingled in the foyer of the Art Gallery of York University. Sure, it was where the free wine and cheese could be safely consumed, but it also felt strangely appropriate for Houle, a Calgary-based artist from the Blood Tribe in southern Alberta, whose performances are done primarily outside the gallery.
Ciel variable 88 - FACES | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Anne-Marie St-Jean Aubre | Artists: Corine Lemieux
November 10, 2016 [originally published in French only in Spring 2011] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.
Ciel variable 88 - FACES | Exhibition reviews
Authors: John Bentley Mays | Artists: Vera Frenkel
November 15, 2016 [originally published in Spring 2011] — The mythographer Mircea Eliade once recalled an interesting belief about memory that is (or was) widespread in the world’s folk cultures.1 In the terrifying moment just before death, so the story goes, everything that has happened in a person’s life, “down to the minutest details,” flashes before his or her eyes. This sudden, sweeping apprehension is, in fact, a sign that death is swiftly approaching.
Ciel variable 88 - FACES | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Marianne Cloutier | Artists: Sophie Calle
November 17, 2016 [originally published in French only in Spring 2011] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.
Ciel variable 88 - FACES | Exhibition reviews
Authors: John K. Grande | Artists: John Baldessari
November 22, 2016 [originally published in Spring 2011] — Conceptual art ideas are pervasive in John Baldessari’s art, from his videos, to his photographs, to his hybrid photo-painted works. Presented by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Tate Modern in London, and following on from the Hirshhorn Museum’s “2007 Ways of Seeing” show, “Pure Beauty” puts another feather in John Baldessari’s cap as a West Coast progenitor of all that conceptual art was, is, or can be. His blending of photography, performance, video, and painting treads the edgy border between visual and textual with a natural affinity.
Ciel variable 88 - FACES | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Bruno Chalifour | Artists: Lee Friedlander
November 24, 2016 [originally published in French only in Spring 2011] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.
Ciel variable 88 - FACES | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Blake Fitzpatrick | Artists: Dana Claxton, Isabelle Hayeur
November 29, 2016 [originally published in CV88, Spring 2011] — “Four Directions: A No. 9 Public Film and Video Exhibition” juxtaposes Werner Herzog’s film Lessons of Darkness (1992), a documentation of the oil fields burning at the conclusion of the Persian Gulf War, with video works by Isabelle Hayeur, Val Klassen, and Dana Claxton.
Ciel variable 88 - FACES | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Anne-Marie St-Jean Aubre | Artists: Keren Cytter
December 1, 2016 [originally published in French in CV88, Spring 2011] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.
Ciel variable 88 - FACES | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Petra Halkes | Artists: Lise Beaudry
December 6, 2016 [originally published in CV88, Spring 2011] — An egg-shaped camping trailer nuzzles up to the large plate-glass windows of Galerie Axenéo7. It is faced by a series of photos of its relatives, Boler camping trailers all of which share the same compact, rounded form but vary endlessly in their fittings and colours. The light-weight fibreglass trailer was first designed in Winnipeg by Ray Olecko, and was produced in various places in Canada from 1968 to 1988.1 Lise Beaudry, a young photographer based in Toronto, is the proud owner of this particular Boler, and the artist behind the exhibition, “Bolerama” (the name Boler owners give to their yearly camping meets).
Ciel variable 88 - FACES | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Jean-Philippe Uzel | Artists: Artur Żmijewski
December 8, 2016 [originally published in French in CV88, Spring 2011] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.