Experience Québec
In the museums
Contemporary art: coast to coast
It’s a major premiere! Three artists. Canadians to boot. Alone the three represent the major trends in “contemporary art” and close to 50 years of Canadian artistic practice. Geoffrey Farmer from Vancouver, Arnaud Maggs from Toronto and Yannick Pouliot from Québec headline at the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal… until April 20.At first glance, they form an odd trio. And yet they intersect. One works in giant puzzles, another in furniture and a third in language, appropriating a nomenclature that he transposes into large chromatic circles.
Geoffrey Farmer
“The Geoffrey Farmer exhibition is the largest devoted to this artist to date. Nothing we know about the Vancouver scene could have predicted this work.” Those are the enthusiastic words with which Musée Director Mark Mayer presents the new Geoffrey Farmer exhibition..
Geoffrey Farmer is certainly one of the most unique and disconcerting voices in the Vancouver art community. Borrowing elements from conceptual and installation art, he practices an aesthetic of accumulation, from works that incorporate sculpture, to video, performance, drawing, photography and the found object. In a tone that combines poetry and social commentary, Farmer examines history, pop culture and art history, as well as the exhibition process itself, with its fictional power and its temporal aspect.Arnaud Maggs : Nomenclature
At 80, he is among Canada’s greatest conceptual artists. This Montréal-born artist has been at the forefront of Canadian conceptual photography for over four decades. Arnaud Maggs started his career as a graphic designer and then worked as a fashion photographer until the mid-1970s. He then launched a career in visual arts, carving out a reputation for his series of conceptual black-and-white portraits systematically taken from the front, side and back, and presented in grid formation.
After years spent revolutionizing portrait art and creating a fascinating iconography out of abstract details, Maggs began to focus on the notion of collective memory, examining the way society relates to the past. This exhibition carries on from the artist’s previous work, offering a kind of “visual library” made up of large-format illustrations reminiscent of official portraits in scale. Nomenclature presents two of his recent photographic series: Werner’s Nomenclature of Colours, 2005 and Cercles chromatiques de M. E. Chevreul, 2006, the titles of which are taken from two esoteric reference works on the language of colour.
Yannick Pouliot
He charms us with works that have an undeniable seductive power: opulent furniture straight out of the 18th century made of mahogany and covered with jacquard upholstery which nevertheless packs a strong, highly contemporary psychological punch... “Picture if you can Watteau and Polanski as partners in a firm of interior decorators,” writes Marc Mayer. Welcome to the world of Québec artist Yannick Pouliot. The Musée d’art contemporain presents Yannick Pouliot in his first solo exhibition in Montréal. .
The exhibition showcases a series of 10 serigraphs, a group of three sculptures—Empire: possessif, Eastlake: intransigeant and Régence monomaniaque from 2007—and a major architectural installation, Louis XVI: indifférent from 2008. In these works, Pouliot continues to explore anthropomorphic domestic forms through pieces inspired by 18th- and 19th-century furniture. Three exhibitions for the price of one at the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal (MAC), until April 20, 2008.
| La série Projections |
| Tseng Yu-Chin – Who’s Listening et I Hate Assumption Du 19 mars au 18 mai 2008 Poète, écrivain et vidéaste, Tseng Yu-Chin s’intéresse à la psychologie du quotidien, et tout particulièrement à travers le regard de l’enfance, jouant sur le décalage entre l’innocence de cette période et notre perception d’adulte. Dans l’un des segments du cycle vidéo Who’s Listening (2003), des enfants attendent le moment où ils seront aspergés de lait, se pliant de bonne grâce à une plaisanterie douteuse. Dans I Hate Assumption (2005), l’artiste filme, avec leur complicité, des enfants se préparant pour l’école dans un état de somnambulisme : yeux fermés, tête renversée, bouche ouverte… |
| Museums à la carte |
| For only $45*, the Montréal Museums Pass provides free access to 30 museums and major attractions in the city, and to the public transit network, for three consecutive days. Pass holders can plan their museum tour by visiting the Board of Montréal Museum Directors (BMMD) site at www.museesmontreal.org. Each of the participating museums is presented along with their exhibitions, activities and location. The Montréal Museums Pass can be obtained from participating museums and attractions, tourist information offices downtown or in Old Montréal, La Vitrine and certain hotels. * The card is also available without public transit for $35. |
André Quenneville
2008-03-17
