Art in Montreal

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 Hurons-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 bur