Art in Montreal

Lynda Gaudreau’s “Romances” at Centre Vox There are half a dozen basic elements to Gaudreau' s show. At the entrance is a wall of staggered images in a dark, makeshift alley. Once you walk through that, there is a little table with coloured lights and some magazines covered in plastic you can flip through. In the anteroom is a prop version of the type of press kiosk that once existed in Montréal, filled with stacks of tabloids, or the “yellow press.” There are two trailers projected for a giallo film (one at a time): one from the perspective of the investigation and one from the victims'. And there is a sound installation, consisting of fragments of music, dialogue, gasps, etc.   According to the accompanying text : The storyline, inspired by the aesthetics of Italian giallo cinema, proceeds through a series of crimes in which the victims’ eyes are mutilated. This motif references the drive and desire to see that is integral to cinema and visual culture. In both the giallo...

Curated by Trevor Kiernander and featuring artists from several countries, Reverb is part of the second edition of the Pictura Triennale (we looked at a very different exhibition from it last week). The event’s organizers define it as : a project that has been in constant development with the specific intention of collectively presenting the various formal, critical, and political positions of Montreal painting to a wider audience, with the aim of bringing international attention to Montreal, which is probably one of the central cities for painting in Canada. The works selected by Kiernander are on display at Art Mûr and form a miniature survey of trends that he has encountered over the past several years and which he frames in reference to the difficulties posed to painting in the post-internet era. Artists selected are Colin Canary, Beth Frey, Ian Gonczarow, Anaïs Goupy, Karine Guyon, Claudia Kleiner, Lauren Pelc McArthur, John Drew Munro, Ianick Raymond, and Megan Wade-Darrag...