Spared by health measures aimed at countering the Omicron wave, visual arts presenters remain among the rare cultural venues, along with libraries, to be able to welcome visitors. Exhibitions in artist centers, private galleries and other spaces offer more than ever the opportunity to escape, or not, reality. Here is our overview.
Through the pandemic lens
It is no doubt tempting to view programming through the lens of the pandemic. For aEliane Excoffierwhich invites you to visit, from a distance, unsuspected universes — thousand leagues (VU center) —, a Ginette Legareis inventive using domestic objects, those within reach, let’s say — stills (Art Mûr gallery). Two exhibitions already in progress.
The year 2022 could be colored by how we react to restrictions. The Galerie de l’UQAM opens its season with a fitting double program.
Project Graduation, do with ofEmilie Bernard claims, in video performance, in drawing or through meditative rituals, that a situation of distress is a source of creativity. In his case, it was a diagnosis of an anxiety disorder that started it all. With humility and transparency, she expresses what others are going through, pandemic or not.
DataaffectS, for its part, brings together seven artists and a collective around “the issues and effects related to digital means of communication”. Does dependency on wifi make you more vulnerable in the event of a power outage? The commissioner Nathalie Bachand, which questions “what does this state of hyperconnection – and its absence – reveal”, has brought together potentially critical works, including Kobold, installation in ceramics and textiles by Dominica Sirois. The Montreal artist is interested here in the exploitation of cobalt, necessary for the batteries of our mobile devices, in order to talk about the chemical materiality of technologies and, by extension, their “non-dematerialization”. Art, even virtual, is not without dangers.
Scheduled for January, the inauguration of the two exhibitions has been postponed to February 11. The Galerie de l’UQAM, like other university distributors, is caught up in the uncertainty regarding the accessibility of the campus. The aptly named Stop / Moments / Location of Mathieu Cardin, planned at the Center d’exposition de l’Université de Montréal, only displays a “dates to come”.
If wellness and healing bring nine artists together under one roof — In constant transformation (Project Casa space, from January 20) —, reconciliation is the business ofOlivia Boudreau. For the video installation artist, “this is the most important gesture we have to make at this time”. “This idea is expressed, she writes in the preamble to the exhibition high voltage (Optica center, from January 22), in the need to rethink our relationship to others and to the world. »
Clemens von Wedemeyer (Vox center, from March 10), an exhibition named after the German artist who also works in video installation, reports on human relationships through the representation of the masses. While at the painter Christian Messier, which brings together landscapes and portraits, the gaze of our contemporaries depicts strangeness and modesty — The loneliness of ghosts (Laroche/Joncas gallery, from January 26).
Contemporary struggles and collective futures
Each season brings its own changes, and this one is marked by the arrival in Chabanel of a first proper broadcaster. Without premises for two years, the Eastern Bloc center, promoter of the next generation in digital arts, lands in this district in cultural effervescence.
The inaugural exhibition tech|| mysticism (from January 22) brings together four artists around “our collective technological future”. A whole program, both optimistic and pessimistic. “Some works explore the liberating potential of virtual spaces, while others unveil the limits of technology in order to answer fundamental questions about life and death,” it says. Note that Eastern Bloc is focusing on accessibility: its new gallery is well established.
Multidisciplinary artist of Anishinaabe origin, Maria Hupfield works with textiles as vectors of memory. The project manidoowegin, or spirit skin (Diagonale centre, from January 27) brings together felt sculptures halfway between abstract work and clothing. Or as the blurb suggests, they are “rooted in tradition” and “standing with contemporary struggles”. Their narrative potential is “anything but simple”.
For its 30th anniversary, the artist-run center Galerie B-312 proposes to review, in three exhibitions, the notions of time and space – two realities that have been shaken up since March 2020. The first, fluid states (starting January 20), is the fruit of the unusual encounter between Maude Ares, 30 years old, and Massimo Guerrera, with 30 years of practice.
Relying on the “fluidity” of their human and material relationship, Arès and Guerrera proceeded to pick up objects in vacant lots near their workshops. Their posture is political: “By revaluing rubbish, announces the text of B-312, artists seek to challenge consumerism. »
Other exhibitions are based on this relationship to objects, or on their rarity. That of Mark Boucher brings together sculptures and performances made from waste — Uphoarding (Product space nothing, in progress). That of Gabi Dao, in collaboration with geetha thurairajah — Soothsay (Clark center, in progress) —, stems from the shortage: the empty shelves of stores at the start of the pandemic pushed her to create with what she unearthed (fly paper, soft fruits, tapioca starch).
The discussion ending Possible futures (Maison des arts de Laval), an exhibition inaugurated in November, echoes initiatives that recycle materials and thus give art a key role. The virtual meeting of February 6, perhaps face-to-face, will bring together the artist Adam Basanta, the commissioner Ariane Plante and the philosopher Jeremiah McEwen.