Art in Montreal

There has been a spate of erotic art shows over the past year, varying highly in approach and quality. So it feels a bit timely that espace art actuel has put out an issue called “Porn*O,” not that it deals with any of this work, although it could be read in reference to some of it. Mathieu Beauséjour ’s show at Bradley|Ertaskiran for instance explicitly used porn the way that it’s sometimes discussed in the collection and Mia Sandhu ’s show at Patel|Brown could also be fitted in here while Kara Eckler ’s show overtly cast itself as a kind of pornography. The issue of esapce contains nine short essays/polemics. They range in approach from autobiography (Steven Audia) to brief art history genealogies (Julie Lavigne, Peter Dubé, Charlene K. Lau) and some attempts at theoretical art criticism (AM Trépanier, Claire Lahuerta, Emma-Kate Guimond, Mayookh Barua). It isn’t pornography itself that is treated as art (which is unfortunate), but a meta or post-pornography that more comfortably sl