At the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, the Swiss of origin Nicholas Party had carte blanche. As director of his exhibition, he integrates some of the Museum’s collections into his works, including that of Ozias Leduc, which gives its title to the exhibition, purple hour. With its refined compositions in vibrant colors, Party continues the symbolist tradition to address our relationship to nature, the common thread of the course. The vision of this scholar of art history is also embodied in the murals made in situ in pastels and oil. At the MMFA, from February 12 to October 16.
He is the most inspired student of Ozias Leduc who stirs up passions in Latent energies. The curator of modern art Anne Marie Bouchardhonors eight works by the painter Paul-Emile Borduas, a precious gift for the collections. From the notorious period of the 1950s, the corpus dialogues with recent acquisitions (Dominique Blain, Michael Campeau, Nadia Myre, Alain Payment and Michaelle Sergil) which evoke the invisible forces in nature and in humans. Like those of the head of the automatists, and beyond the black and white, the works testify to desires for commitment. At the National Museum of Fine Arts of Quebec, from February 24 to April 14.
Whereas Rita Letendre, who left us last November, was in the 1950s alongside Borduas, she then quickly defined her singular approach in energetic abstractions, the famous period of the “Arrows”. This flagship corpus is part of the retrospective Lines of strength presented by the Musée des beaux-arts de Sherbrooke, in an exhibition circulated by the Musée du Bas-Saint-Laurent. The biographical overview inspired the Bas-Laurentian choreographer Soraida Caron a work that is shown on video. At the MBAS, from January 27 to April 10.
While key figures of Quebec abstraction are celebrated, the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa goes to the beginnings of modernity in painting with Canada and Impressionism. New horizons. While the usual narrative is that the artists here were subject to European influences, the exhibition demonstrates their particular contributions, inflecting a trajectory specific to a movement far from being monolithic. At the NGC, opening date to be confirmed due to health restrictions.
black affirmations
To correct the under-representation of black artists in our institutions, the Molinari Foundation contributes with Unpacking, a solo reserved for the African-American Robert Holland Murray (1939-2017). In 1967, he left a riot-ridden Detroit to settle in Montreal, where he was a congener of Molinari at Concordia University. It’s another colleague, the painter David Elliot, who curates this exhibition revealing his work. His wood carvings and installation celebrate aspects of a black identity while critiquing the violence of discrimination. At the Molinari Foundation, from February 3 to April 3.
The minimalism to which we can link the work of Holland Murray is moreover a heritage revisited by Adam Pendelton, which will have its first exhibition in Canada, What we did together. With his monumental installations featuring text with expressive lettering, the 30-year-old based in New York also explores conceptual art, avant-gardes of the 1960s that excluded black realities. drawings of sound Black hobby, a manifesto begun in 2008, also express its protest activity, as studied as it is dazzling. At the MMFA, from March 15 to July 10.
The Phi Foundation welcomes the work of Stan Douglas, whose conceptualism has for 30 years been associated with photography from the Vancouver School. In the two series he presents, the most recent of which Penn Station’s Half Century (2021), he revisits historical situations that are often unfair to black people, blending fact and fiction into complex, overtly constructed images. Promoting readings lurking in the shadow of official history is the creed of the person representing Canada at the 59and Venice Biennale. At the Phi Foundation, from February 19 to May 22.
out of the box
Distance learning is causing a lot of headaches in education. The MACLAU shows ingenious solidarity with Emporiaand the projects concocted in the fall of 2020 by Bonnie Baxter, Stanley February,Philippe Hamelin, Kim Kielhofner and Sophie Latouche with Xavier Brouillette, philosophy teacher at Cégep du Vieux Montréal. Ancient Greece at the source, the reflections carried out around commodification could continue with the literature and philosophy groups of the Cégep de Saint-Jérôme invited to hold classes at the Museum. Like an outgrowth, the Baxter project, The Patch, is enriched by the performances of 10 artists who came to his tomato garden in Val-David. At the Musée d’art contemporain des Laurentides, from February 27 to April 21.
A mysteriously animated forest awaits the public at the Musée d’art de Joliette with the latest production of DaveandJenn. The Calgary duo, known for their paintings, deploy their universe in a highly sensory video installation critical of capitalism that promotes exploitative relationships. Artists identify traces of it in the still lifes of the 17th centuryand century as in the myth of Actaeon which they revisit in their fable. At the MAJ, from February 5 to April 24.
It’s the group show Desiller. Open to off-screen which promises to be the piece de resistance of the MAJ, with the recent work of LornaBauer, of Marie Claire Blais, of NadegeGrebmeier Forget, ofAlicia Henry, of Tau Lewis, of Michaëlle Sergile and D’Eve Tagny. Curator of Contemporary Art Anne-Marie Saint-Jean Aubretakes the image of the frame to explain the limits differently experienced by works claiming for women, moreover non-white for some, a place hitherto refused and whose edges, precisely, are to be redefined. At the MAJ, from February 5 to May 5.