Art in Montreal

Arriving during the summer slump (festival season) for galleries is the 20th edition of Art Mûr’s annual survey of the work of (primarily) grad students from MFA programmes across the country. And it is interesting again because the survey form and its absence of supplementation largely removes any clear intentionality and whatever “meaning” there seems to be comes largely from coincidences of display. Aside from checking if they had websites, I have made no effort to discern the significance of the works involved beyond how they appear in this context. The exhibition Fresh Paint and New Construction, a not-to-be-missed annual event, celebrates its 20th edition this year. As every July at Art Mûr gallery, the works of students from twelve Canadian universities are brought together in a collective exhibition, offering a captivating immersion into new artistic approaches. This edition is no exception, with a selection of works highlighting the innovation and creativity of the next gen...

This week we will look at two current exhibitions that overlap in framing and style, one stressing the elliptical and the other softness. At Blouin|Division is Ellipses by Angela Grauerholz , featuring work that spans from the 1980s until a couple of years ago. The retrospective quality reinforces the retrospective content of the images, both of which tend to suggest an indifferent (or at least foggy) temporality. While there have been some distinct tangents in her career, there is not much indication of them here. What is on display is the kind of thing she has been best known for (and which has been central to her other more or less retrospective shows), namely photos of display spaces (galleries, museums, gardens) and the various windows to the world that they echo (door and window frames as stand-ins for the frames around art or their devices of capture and vice versa). The gallery frames it this way : Grauerholz’s images have the preternatural ability to be experienced as fra...