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A guide to the best exhibitions and events in the visual arts
The idea for “Yesterday’s Tomorrows” began with an installation by the Toronto artist Paulette Phillips on the architect and designer Eileen Gray. Seeing it got me thinking about the proliferation of artists who are revisiting modernism and why so many of them are focusing on a specific object, be it an iconic building or person. The works in the exhibition are not homages: they’re not naive or cynical. Architecture and design offer another way into the ideals and aspirations of modernism. Artists are aware of its contradictions and its failures, but by putting that history in a social context, they look at it anew.
Lesley Johnstone is the curator of “Yesterday’s Tomorrows.” The show runs to Sept. 6 at the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, 185, rue Ste-Catherine O.
Quebec City’s L’Oeil de Poisson kicks off its 25th-anniversary year by taking over the village of Deschambault-Grondines for a summer festival of art interventions by BGL, Graeme Patterson and Kim Waldron, among others. June 18 to Sept. 26. Various locations, Deschambault-Grondines.
Conquerors versus conquered and decadence versus decay are two of the critical counterpoints raised by Miller in “Refining History,” a survey exhibition that brings together photos of sitespecific, azulejo-design sugar murals and new icing-sugar sculptures to re-examine the legacy of slavery and industrial trade in postcolonial Brazil. July 12 to Aug. 13. FOFA Gallery, 1515, rue Ste-Catherine O., Montreal.
The Montreal artist closes the reality gap between selfidentity and pop-culture obsession with her sound work ORCHESTRARIA. Pascal Dufaux’s perspective-bending “sculptural-video-kinetic automaton” The cosmos in which we are follows. Through July 4/on view July 15 to Aug. 29. Sporobole, 74, rue Albert, Sherbrooke.
Two intertwining threads run through “Magnetic Norths”: the North as a conceptual fantasy and also as a real space that is the site of colonialism, military enterprise and industrial exploration. On the one hand, there are archival objects like American military blueprints and photos of Alaskan oil fields from the Center for Land Use Interpretation. On the other, the show includes Michael Snow’s La Région Centrale, which frames the northern Quebec landscape as a lunar surface, and Kevin Schmidt’s recreation of Close Encounters of the Third Kind in the Yukon. It’s a diverse collection that revels in fantasy but is also critical of certain real histories.
Charles Stankievech is an artist and curator. He is the organizer of “Magnetic Norths,” which runs to Apr. 17 at the Leonard & Bina Ellen Art Gallery, 1400, boul. de Maisonneuve O., Montreal.
More than 60 drawings, sculptures and dioramas by the Winnipeg-born, NY–based artist make up a mid-career survey that attests to the lasting appeal of Dzama’s unclassifiable, elusive art. To Apr. 25. Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, 185, rue Ste-Catherine O.
Domesticity and isolation are awkwardly counterposed in a series of photos that profile residents of a queer campground in Quebec through exterior views of their tents, cabins and summer homes. To Apr. 13. Les Territoires, 527–372, rue Ste-Catherine O., Montreal.
Famed archaeological landscapes are inscribed into encyclopedias, dictionaries and rare books in Guy Laramée’s “Pluie,” a solo exhibition of sculptures and paintings that allegorize cultural presence and withdrawal. Apr. 8 through May 2. Galerie Orange 81, rue St-Paul E., Montreal.
The Croatian artist’s tongue-in-cheek conceptual practice is best exemplified by his tenet “There is no art without laziness.” A long-overdue Canadian survey exhibition highlights his bookworks, photos and installations. Opening May 8. VOX, 1211, boul. St-Laurent, Montreal.
I fell in love with Eija-Liisa Ahtila’s art in 1999, when I saw a work called Consolation Service, about a couple in the throes of divorce. In one scene, we see a baby handed from mother to counsellor and then to father during a therapy session as the parents literally bark at one another in a violent, primal and ultimately cathartic exchange. Eija-Liisa is an awesome, serious and occasionally comically absurd filmmaker who coldly dramatizes powerful emotions, plunging us deep inside psychological states— loss, madness, adolescent sexuality— while scrambling our perception of events in space and time in ways that make us think about how images and words unfold in narrative.
John Zeppetelli is Curator at DHC/ART Foundation for Contemporary Art in Montreal. Eija-Liisa Ahtila’s solo show opens there on Jan. 29, 451/465, rue St-Jean.
Large-scale sculptures and paintings reinterpret monumentality. Jan. 14 to Feb. 20. Parisian Laundry, 3550, rue St-Antoine O., Montreal.
Some 80 works by the Pre-Raphaelite master, as well as his sketchbooks and letters, reflect Victorian-era spiritualism. To Feb. 7. Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal, 1379–80, rue Sherbrooke O.
The poetic and transformative nature of cosmic events inspires a year-long series of residencies culminating in a performance combining live drawing, video and gesture. From Feb. 12. Articule, 262, ave. Fairmount O., Montreal.
Time and space become eerily contingent in “Equivalences,” a multi-gallery show of landscapes. Jan. 9 to Feb. 13. Galerie Donald Browne, 524–372, rue Ste-Catherine O., and other venues, Montreal.
“Historically the museum has been constructed as a space that is intended to be a backdrop for art, and I wanted to change that. An early catalyst for my architectural installation was Nikolai Gogol’s novel Dead Souls. In the spirit of Gogol’s book, it will be a sprawling work made of disparate materials. The viewer will walk on a false floor: on a basic level my intention is to transport you into another material world. This tactile experience of space is going to be different than what we’ve ordinarily come to expect from the museum. Hopefully my work will also allow for a different experience of time: maybe a new, non-linear presence will have sprung up within the museum.”
Tricia Middleton is a Montreal artist. Her solo show opens at the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal on Oct. 10, 185, rue Ste-Catherine O.
Full talks and tours schedule, Douglas Coupland conversation info, and magazine launch details posted for free day of activities
Applications due May 9 for $55,000 in prizes
Free art tours for high-school students to take place in April and May
New writers on contemporary art encouraged to apply by June 1
Dates already set for next year’s Toronto festival
Applications for this $7,000 student award are due April 6
Event to feature a conversation with Douglas Coupland, gallery tours, a magazine launch and more
Films on Shary Boyle, Elmgreen & Dragset, Michel de Broin and Jon Gnarr set to open the festival on March 22
Opening-night celebration and art-industry talks highlight fifth year of fair
Don’t miss the North American premieres of films on Candida Höfer and Thomas Struth, happening February 23
The 85-year-old artist Arnaud Maggs nudged out Fred Herzog and Alain Paiement as winner of the second annual Scotiabank Photography Award, announced last night in Toronto. This $50,000 win follows the opening of a major Maggs survey at the National Gallery of Canada.
As one of the primary exhibitions for Contact 2012, “Public: Collective Identity | Occupied Spaces” is ambitious. Charlene K. Lau observes that the two-venue show mirrors the fractures of contemporary life: public and private, visible and invisible, place and non-place.
In this review, writer and artist Joni Murphy considers Abbas Akhavan’s current solo show in Montreal, which activates a variety of themes—war and art, destruction and nation building, human and animal—with a distinctively light touch.
Melding William Morris-style ornamentation with more contemporary concerns, artist Luke Painter detours around dry academicism for something more vibrant and visceral. Mariam Nader reviews his current Toronto show at LE Gallery, finding depth in decoration.
Frieze opened its first New York edition last week with some surprising highlights: sculptures that were free for public viewing outside the big commercial tent. Canadian Art art director Barbara Solowan was there, and brought back this slideshow.
