Art in Montreal

  This week we look at four shows that superficially seem distinct but which reveal a variety of strategies for dealing with clearly shared concerns about the relation between the artist and their space, the eroticism of spatial connections, and attempts (not all successful) to deal with these things in terms of visual effects. Jérôme Bouchard ’s ni flaques, ni boue at galeries Roger Bellemare et Christian Lambert was inspired by a construction site in a park outside of Paris. The artist tried to map the territory using a LiDAR capture device, which transmitted data of the space through light measurements. This data provides a record of the erosion of the space and its transformation through ecological wastage. He explains that: By manipulating the data, I sought to explore the limits of this technology to capture such ‘third nature’ composed of waste, muddy puddles, gravel and earth, and plants. Since the floods of 2021 which destroyed my workshop in Belgium, I have been hau...

  Curated by Louise Déry and Marie-Hélène Leblanc , the new group show at Galerie de l’UQAM , Faux plis par hypothèses , proposes to look at the biases of various models of knowledge and “how a university gallery engages in crucial issues that often concern several research sectors: questions of languages and identities, terrestrials and territories, structures and institutions.” Preface Spread over five galleries across the province (Galerie UQO, Galerie de l’UQAM, Galerie l’Œuvre de l’Autre, Jardins de Métis, and Galerie d’art Foreman), the exhibitions collectively contain the works of more than a dozen artists: Eruoma Awashish, Geneviève Chevalier, Club de prospection figurée, Anna Binta Diallo, Caroline Fillion, Maryse Goudreau, Richard Ibghy & Marilou Lemmens, Sophie Jodoin, Emmanuelle Léonard, Mélanie Myers, Kosisochukwu Nnebe, Anahita Norouzi, and Leila Zelli. I only attended the installment at UQAM so my comments will be limited to that and the catalogue. The selec...

The fall season is here and galleries are opening their doors again. The art spaces at the Gaspé relaunched last week with the halls including a poster declaring the ongoing panic about the decline of culture and its potential ruination. The point comes across with a certain degree of ambiguity in the wording and this provides a useful backdrop to what will be discussed in this article. This selection of reviews is organized in a more or less thematic manner. The theme is primarily monumentality and secondarily some other, maybe more interesting things. Monumentality is a pretty standard theme in art discourse, localized in discussions of its earliest iterations in religious art and territorial markings. Monuments are one clear way to leave a trace or mark-up a landscape. The term tends to conjure the sculptural but certainly is not limited to it. A monument often indicates and memorializes the passage of some historical event, standing in for it as a kind of presence that may cast a...