Art in Montreal

Originally launched in 2012, the Biennale d’art contemporain autochtone ( BACA ) was established “to promote Aboriginal art and to raise awareness and educate the public about First Nations cultural issues.” BACA is produced in partnership with the Canada Council for the Arts, the Government of Québec (Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec, Fonds d’investissement pour le rayonnement de la Métropole, Secrétariat des affaires autochtones), the Conseil des arts de Montréal, and Tourisme Montréal. The biennial runs from March until September at several locations within the province (DRAC – Art actuel Drummondville, Galerie d’art Stewart Hall, Musée des beaux-arts de Sherbrooke, La Guilde, Maison de la culture Verdun, Centre d’exposition de Saint-Hyacinthe, Musée McCord Stewart, and Musée Rimouski). This, the seventh iteration of the biennial, involves the work of more than sixty artists. Keeping within the generic aspects of biennials, it is organized by curators Lori Beavis, Emma H...

I have already scratched out a few general statements on my position regarding art. One way to complicate this a bit is by way of contrast. There are a number of art theorists and critics I hold in high regard and whose notions would provide some significantly different nuances to what I am about to attempt, and perhaps fail, to articulate. For the sake of brevity, I will deal with only two here to delineate the background for my position. They are Donald Kuspit and Leo Bersani. Both were writers for October, Artforum and other publications. Bersani, in particular, has had a varied and expansive career covering many different art forms and darting off in various (not entirely reconcilable) directions. Kuspit has been much more limited, focused, and repetitive, working in a vein influenced primarily by Adorno. I find myself only partially agreeing with either of them most of the time, but I think they each provide some useful direction for art criticism. The following is not intended ...

Espace Loulou is a small space at the north end of Saint Laurent that you reach in a brown elevator. It is currently hosting the show Le Jour Défait , by two artists I have discussed previously, Christian Messier and Syrine Daigneault . Made up of a small set of paintings, they are woven together through a set of recurrent referents (match held by hand, volcanoes) and more elaborate tableaux. The show is given a certain unity thanks to these recurrences and to the styles of the two painters which, while distinct, do not abrasively rub against one another but work in a complementary way. According to the exhibition statement : Syrine draws her inspiration from the contingency of social norms and the construction of reality. Her paintings visually capture the tension between individual consciousness and learned social behaviour. This sharp perception, exacerbated by the derealization she experiences, translates into an exploration of the vital force that emanates from this lucidity. ...

This is probably the last of my looks at the basic political economy of Contemporary Art in the province. It is a review of Guy Sioui Durand’s L’art comme alternative: Réseaux et Pratiques d’art parallèle au Québec 1976-1996 . A member of the Huron-Wendat nation, Durand is a sociologist by training and the book is an adaptation of his dissertation. He has a long history working within the milieu he describes as well as museums, as an author for various provincial arts magazines, and as an academic instructor. We have already seen how a leading technocrat for the cultural sector has justified its existence as a form of enchantment, how the sector was critiqued for being essentially corrupt and fostering incompetence by two of its insiders, and how even its apologists recognized that what resulted from the various strategies of artists, artists’ groups, federal, provincial, and municipal governments was primarily the establishment of a system of pastoral care for its ideological bure...