Three proposals of varying content and format which have as a common thread the landscape in the post-Fordist era.
A Vacuum in Front that Sucks it Forward. Exhibiting without depending on the programming committees is the credo of young Philippe Bourdeau and Paul Nadeau, curator and artist respectively. Their project takes place in a commercial premises, an enviable window in Mile End, sold for a few weeks by the owners against a large household. A dozen paintings bring a road trip disenchanted, fragments of landscapes inspired by Western Canada, that of tourist and mining activities. Bold and spontaneous, but without derogating from the codes, their proposal also expresses the wish to share with the following the space hardened up.
173 Bernard Street West,
Thursday to Sunday, 12 p.m. to 6 p.m., until December 5.
A. Conveyor.Chris Boyne, meanwhile, followed in the footsteps of theAtlantic Conveyor, to the town of Alang, in India, cemetery where other ships of its kind end, these container ships carrying our goods. Their traffic is intense, however, invisible to us. The Halifax native has often seen them set off offshore, and in particular the ship targeted by his obsessive quest. At Belgo, in the heart of the Skol artists’ center, throne, almost alone, a mechanical part, such as evidence brought back from the dismantling site. On the wall, the doctored words of a safety warning evoke the fate of the workers involved, causing this work, however conceptual, to capsize in emotion.
Skol, 372, rue Sainte-Catherine O., local 314, until December 11.
Silent Songs. Jérôme Nadeau’s peregrinations are embodied in the images found – often on the Net – which he accumulates, manipulates and prints on canvas, until they forget their origin, their original nature. For this second solo with his gallery owner Nicolas Robert, he has retained four sober and majestic works, the most accomplished to date. Their reticular and grid patterns bring forth infinite visual correspondences between the plant and computer worlds, like secret connections between biology, neuroscience and artificial intelligence. Electric wire poles and miniature works act as a counterpoint in a sensitive as well as perfectly mastered whole that is revealed even in the detail of a small poster with its black and white film photo. The branch captured by the artist in his beginnings, on the shores of the landscape of his childhood near the Île d’Orléans, finds its raison d’être within what, too, tends to create cosmogony.
Galerie Nicolas Robert, 10, rue King, until November 27.