evergon | The Explorer of Desire | The Press

The Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec (MNBAQ) hits hard again with the retrospective dedicated to Montreal photographer Evergon. Intimate theaters is an exploration of the 50 years of production of this artist renowned on the international scene for his flamboyant style and his homoerotic imagery. But the exhibition above all highlights an Evergon with a universal and very current language.

Eric Clement
The Press

“Some images might not shock you! “, humorously warns the MNBAQ. Let’s recognize that we had prejudices. Evergon was one of the first artists to campaign for LGBTQ+ rights, to tackle the theme of inclusion and to photograph very mischievous male nudes… We anticipated a string of erotic images hung on the picture rails. Nay! After three years of research, and with the help of the artist Didier Morelli, curator Bernard Lamarche, curator of contemporary art at the MNBAQ, has managed to draw up an exhaustive portrait of Evergon, a colorful artist, yes, but multifaceted.

The exhibit should appeal to the open-minded art lover. Artistic nudity may surprise, even today, but shock?

The museum has nevertheless reserved and clearly identified a room for the spiciest works. You may or may not enter it. But Loïc Lefebvre’s refined scenography and the order of presentation of the works are clever, gradually immersing us in Evergon’s universe.

Some 230 works, including several never before seen, are divided into 10 major features of the production of the 76-year-old artist. Evergon has experimented with several photographic processes, from cyanotype to polaroid, including digital imaging and holography. We find, with happiness, his photographs that surf between theatricality and intimacy. Evergon staged his life, his desires, his fantasies. He often did this by drawing inspiration from the history of art.

The room of Ramboys, half-man half-rams that evoke satyrs from Greek mythology, is one of the most impressive. Evergon created this men’s company in the 1990s, inspired by Beat Generation writer William S. Burroughs. His photographs are animal, wild, fantastic, ecstatic, but also spiritual and universal. Iconic Evergon storytelling.

We have reserved a room for the corpus Manscapes, landscapes representing places where homosexuals hang out. Photographs less spectacular, but full of meaning. A room also presents three holographies on youth, maturity and old age. Nice effect.

In the “full-bodied” room, we see the male genitalia in three photos, one of which is a scene of fellatio between the artist and a model. This is the most explicit photo. Evergon’s images indeed evoke, first and foremost, love, romance, sexuality among elders. “We are far from dehumanizing pornography, says Bernard Lamarche. These images are not intended for sexual arousal. We are not in the action, but in the pose and in the political claim, in particular the right for an aging man to have a sex life and a body which does not correspond to the canons of beauty of society. »

Evergon still fears some reactions. “The Trumpian era has done a lot of damage,” he said. We backed off. Society is less open than at the end of the 1970s.” “The exhibition brings together hot topics, such as fatphobia and sexual diversity, adds Bernard Lamarche. When we see our mayor, in Quebec, accused of being homosexual! As if that was an insult! Apparently it still is. It’s atrocious! Evergon shows realities that exist, whether we like it or not. »

This is the case of the photos of his mother, Margaret, who loved to pose naked for him. Without embarrassment, with dignity. The aged body is not a norm, obviously.

The exhibition shows recent works created with the artist Jean-Jacques Ringuette, a model for Evergon for a long time and with whom he founded the Grincheux chromogènes. Since Thursday, the St-Laurent Hill gallery in Ottawa has been presenting their latest creations, including domestic plants. Some are exhibited in the last room of the exhibition, near a Pierrot which evokes that of Antoine Watteau (1684-1721) and near a triptych with his naked mother, lying in a recamier, himself in the same position, and the empty sofa: a reflection on death. And a reference to the table Olympia by Edouard Manet.

Intimate theaters is the densest exhibition produced by curator Bernard Lamarche, who is very proud of the work accomplished. “I had moments of vertigo. I wondered if I was going to be able to measure myself against this true epic of Evergon. Landscapes, still lifes, the representation of acrobats, descents from the cross, the Pieta, subjects of great classical painting, all of this is magnificent! And like the exhibition on Stanley February, this one changes our point of view on life. It is our vocation, at the museum, to present things that are less known, less easy. A museum is an actor in society, which is tied to our reality. »

The exhibition is accompanied by a beautiful 236-page catalogue, which makes this museum complex an excellent reason to take a tour of the Plains of Abraham before April 23. To discover the fabric and the virtuosity of Evergon, too long considered as the artist of a single community. By combining the real with the staging, he nevertheless speaks of the essential. About the meaning of life, our finitude and the responsible desire to live in peace and harmony.