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...

Stephanie Temma Hier ’s Roadside Picnic at Bradley|Ertaskiran consists largely of stoneware sculptures cast from trash found near the artist’s home. These are arranged to suggest A meadow, a picnic, a gathering; apple cores, bottles, cigarette butts, charred remains. This is the scene of the 1971 sci-fi novella Roadside Picnic by Soviet-Russian authors Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, chronicling familiar items left behind from visiting extraterrestrials, uncanny matter from another world. This is also the stuff of Stephanie Temma Hier’s world: ants, trash, birds of prey, teeth, fish, and bones abound. […] …always straddling a fine line between alluring and grotesque. Beyond the perils of consumption, we find a world where the nostalgia for lost innocence takes on new meanings. And yet, the sheer scope of Hier’s pieces does not lessen the care or sentimentality imbued into each object; sweet, comic relief and personal mementos are sprinkled throughout. The installation features trash...

There were three exhibitions focusing on the Torma-Zsako family in the city over the past month or so. One at Robert Poulin ( Métamorphoses ) that featured them heavily, one at Laroche/Joncas ( 1 famille, 4 artistes, 2 expositions ), and this one at Projet Casa ( Flowers, Warriors, Beasts, Hands: Divergences et réciprocité ). Unsurprisingly, there was a fair amount of overlap between them. The Poulin and Casa shows were, however, the stronger. The Casa show displayed them at their most uneven and Istvan’s and David ’s sculptures dominated. At Poulin it was Balint ’s watercolours and Anna ’s sewn works that overshadowed the others. The Casa show was very much a sculpture show and the Poulin show was a wall art one.