Tag: exhibit

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Painting with intuition and reason

Concordia alumna Sylvie Adams exhibits three series of serendipitous paintings in The Time, the Mark , the Space. Blueberry Lime Sorbet (left), Portrait de Genre IV (centre) and Winter Day at the Lake (right) illustrate two of the three series. Photo by Mackenzie Lad

Concordia alumna Sylvie Adams exhibits three series of serendipitous paintings

When it comes to abstraction, the eye tends to search for familiar shapes. Each person’s perspective and interpretation of an abstract work will be different. Concordia alumna Sylvie Adams’s solo exhibition, The Time, the Mark , the Space, is no different.

Adams chose the title of her exhibition to be representative of her artistic process, which relies on time and gravity. The artist allows the initial application of paint to drip down the canvas, letting physics create her underpainting. The colours mix without the artist manually affecting the nature of the paint. Once Adams feels ready, she will make intuitive markings with acrylic paint, India ink or spray paint. She lets the piece speak to her; the universe pulls her towards making specific marks on some pieces and not on others, she explained. It is in this phase that the image begins to take shape.

Concordia alumna Sylvie Adams will exhibit three series of serendipitous paintings at Maison de la culture Marie-Uguay (6052 Monk Blvd.), until March 25. Photo by Mackenzie Lad

The artist graduated from Concordia University in 1987 with a major in design and a minor in visual arts. At the time, Adams did not spend much time painting, but when she did, she preferred creating realistic depictions. It was Marilyn Rubenstein, an abstract artist, who encouraged Adams to begin her abstract practice. When the two met, Rubenstein was a drawing and painting teacher at the Saidye Bronfman Centre School of Fine Arts, now the Visual Arts Centre.

Today, Adams practices lyrical abstraction, a form of abstraction that uses softer, looser brushwork. The practice is largely based on the artist’s painterly intuition. “I start with a neutral, black-and-white background, and I start to play with different mediums, experimenting with their fluidity. Some parts I will wet, others I will not,” Adams explained. She said she also likes to leave some sections untouched, exposing the raw canvas to create a balance between the strokes, dripping paint and sprays of colour. The artist uses a paper cut-out to shield sections of the painting and isolate some elements, enforcing the negative space between one part and another.

“When I start painting, I don’t know what it will look like, I don’t know what colours I’ll use,” Adams said. Intuition and reason are key in her practice. She must be sure the mark she will make is the right one. Some abstract work is created chaotically, but Adams’s isn’t. Her paintings are carefully crafted, just as a realistic painting would be. Yet unlike realism, Adams has no set subject matter.

Adams forms a dialogic relationship with her work. Each mark she makes utters a response, leading the artist to her next movement. “It is as though the painting is saying something to me,” she said. “I just have to be open to it.” The final result is a painting symbolic of a conversation the artist has with herself and her work, bringing her intuition, dynamic actions and personal thoughts, feelings and emotions into play.

The dialogue Adams holds with her work is a meditative one, which she admits can be quite frustrating. Some pieces, like Cookie Monster, are kept in the studio for a few months before the artist realizes the mark she is compelled to make. In its early stages, Cookie Monster was without the two strokes shaped like the number six. Adams recognised the body of a monster in her application of dark paint as it dripped in a way that illustrated teeth. To highlight this idea, Adams felt the need to give it eyes.

Despite the monster appearing in Cookie Monster, Adams’s paintings are comforting and can be relatable to viewers who look closely. Individual experiences draw people to different pieces and change what people take away from her work.

In its early stages, Cookie Monster was without the two strokes shaped like the number six. Photo by Mackenzie Lad

The Time, the Mark , the Space also features a series of portraits. The artist uses a combination of warm flesh tones, black and white to create a hidden visage. In Portrait de Genre I, Adams saw the face of an old man, while one viewer saw the face of a baby wrapped in a pink blanket, and another recognized U.S. President Donald Trump.   

Adams uses three distinct colour palettes in The Time, the Mark, the Space: a series of warm tones (pinks, beiges, oranges, browns) as seen in the Portrait de genre series I-IV and Cookie Monster; cool tones ranging from blues and greens in Frostbite, Cri Primal, Winter Day at the Lake and Blueberry Lime Sorbet, and finally a series of rich burgundy, orange, green, and red tones in Close Call, La marche du temps, Chemin en Mutation and Mango Chutney.

The exhibition’s 13 paintings were all created last year, and each one symbolizes the creation of a world, as stated in the galley brochure.

The Time, the Mark , the Space is open from 1 p.m. to 7 p.m. Tuesdays and Wednesdays, until 6 p.m. on Thursdays and until 5 p.m. on Friday and weekends. It will be displayed at Maison de la culture Marie-Uguay (6052 Monk Blvd.) until March 25.

Photos by Mackenzie Lad

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Shining a light on newly-discovered talent

In its latest exhibition, Galerie Youn showcases the work of emerging artists

A tree is represented at the very back of Galerie Youn—it is the tree of paradise on which a gang of defiant “Eves” cavort and gorge upon the fruit. This provocative and beautifully-rendered piece by Robin Crofut-Brittingham is part of the gallery’s NEW WORK exhibition, which showcases new and emerging talent.

It is difficult to fully immerse oneself in the pure aesthetic pleasure of a topically and stylistically diverse exhibition when a space is so steeped in one of the principal philosophic dilemmas of art. This is true particularly during these times of technological and economic predominance. The shredded U.S. flag and photograph of former president Obama, which beckon passing patrons into the gallery, serve to reinforce the current sense that we are entering an age in which anti-intellectualism and retraction of support for creative endeavours will only be intensified.

Youn described a conversation with a nurse in which he attempted to argue the equality of value between what she did and what the artists he represents produce. His main point is that the physical, intellectual and emotional effort put into creating a piece, such as Dan Ivic’s Half a Soul, is as valuable as the work carried out by a health professional. For this reason, it is perfectly appropriate to expect remuneration for the compositions, which range from $275 right up to $8,000. According to Youn, what seems to be the deciding factor is how essential a product or service is to a person’s life—is the correct functioning of our physical being a more valuable asset than the kind of spiritual awakenings or affirmations we might access through art?

The Old Satyr by Mark Liam Smith provides an interesting insight into this dilemma, where the viewer of a work has begun to fuse with it. Art can certainly perform a kind of intellectual surgery, one which will probably never be available in any conventional clinic. With 12 years of experience in the “tough world” of running galleries, Youn certainly is an example of a human totally possessed by his passion.

With its current exhibition, NEW WORK, Galerie Youn has provided a serious and reflective space for what is an aesthetically and politically vibrant company of emerging artists. The array of media is astonishing, and provides a stimulating viewer experience.

The gallery itself will have a table at the prestigious Volta Art Fair in New York at the beginning of March, and Youn states how this would give his artists access to the kind of markets in which patrons were more likely to dig deep in order to acquire their work. The NEW WORK exhibition runs in Montreal until March 11. The gallery is open Wednesday through Friday, from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. Admission is free.

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Parachutes and politics: New at the FOFA Gallery

Another part of the exhibit examines WWII parachutes. Photo courtesy of the FOFA Gallery

Both new exhibitions encourage viewers to question the world as we see it

Politics as performance art and parachutes as wedding dresses. These two exhibitions at the Faculty of Fine Arts (FOFA) gallery ask us to be open-minded, and challenge how we perceive the world.

Although the two works are very different in nature, they revolve around the same theme of reshaping the familiar. Kim Waldron and pk langshaw both accomplish this in their work using different mediums.

“While these two exhibitions are distinct and have different conceptual frameworks, both [Waldron] and [langshaw] have ambitiously transformed the spaces which they occupy,” said Jennifer Dorner, director of the FOFA gallery.

For her exhibition, Superstar, Waldron documented her experience of running as an independent in the 2015 federal election. The photos, video fragments and portraits featured at the exhibition offer a look into her campaign, which in reality was a year-long performance during which she effectively became someone else. Waldron used her status as a professional artist in order to frame herself as a credible candidate.

Kim Waldron ran for public office while pregnant, a fact reflected in her campaign photos.
Courtesy of the FOFA Gallery

The exhibition toes the line between art and documentary work. To the casual observer, the photos and videos in the exhibition space would seem to document a serious political campaign. Upon closer inspection, however, we see that each piece was part of an intricate performance.

Waldron was pregnant during the campaign, a fact reflected in her posters, as we see her swollen belly. This is a stark contrast to the posters of other party candidates, which Waldron believes reek of corporate branding.

“Women candidates definitely don’t run using such an image, as people tend to focus on trivial things in regard to women, like the outfit she is wearing,” said Waldron. “The fact that I started out pregnant and ended up with a one-year-old baby also became a commentary on the ridiculous length of the campaign.”

The second exhibition, the parachute unfolds: follow the thread by pk langshaw, on the other hand, uses reclaimed WWII parachutes to question how we associate meaning with objects, and how this meaning evolves as the shape of the object evolves. Langshaw is the department chair of design and computational arts at Concordia, and is interested in how garments carry different meanings.

The dresses are not cut or snipped, but reshaped—therefore, they are still parachutes. This exhibition poses interesting questions about the attribution we give to certain materials and fabrics. Accompanying the wedding dresses is also a video and an entire parachute, continuously ruffled by a wind machine in the vitrine.

“Visitors will be inspired by the beauty of these works,” said Dorner. “They will also be provoked to think differently about the social spaces that surround us.”

The exhibitions at the FOFA are ongoing until Oct. 21. The gallery is open Monday to Friday, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.

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Fame & controversy: Mapplethorpe in Montreal

This retrospective exhibition shows Mapplethorpe’s work from his time as a budding artist until his untimely death

In a Canadian first, the works of American photographer Robert Mapplethorpe will be displayed at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (MMFA).  Focus: Perfection – Robert Mapplethorpe is a retrospective exhibit containing works from his earliest projects, leading up all the way to his death in 1989. The exhibition contains a collection of photographs, collages, books and other works spanning the totality of the American photographer’s career, including his early experiments with Polaroids.

Mapplethorpe, who produced highly-stylized black-and-white prints in the 70s, was a controversial figure in the New York art scene, his photographs have acted as both a statement for and against their own artistic value. His highly contentious X series, depicting homoerotic and BDSM scenes, are the focal point of the controversy surrounding his work.

In a 1989 Republican Convention, Senator Jesse Helms, infuriated by the apparently moral obscenity of Mapplethorpe’s photographs, called for their censorship. He famously said: “look at the pictures!” Helms believed their “immoral” and “grotesque” nature would be obvious at a glance. This sort of controversy is something that Mapplethorpe enjoyed, and even strove to achieve.

“When there was controversy, it seemed to be something he promoted. He liked the idea of shocking people, depicting things that had never been seen before, that were unsettling,” said Mikhel Proulx, an instructor at Concordia University’s art history department. “He would probably call it his style, but his brand was linked to some sense of these images being controversial.”

Now, a few decades later, the controversy and shocking nature of Mapplethorpe’s photos has abated, leaving space for discussion, appreciation and critique—and that’s exactly what the MMFA wants to promote said Proulx. The works and their history raise interesting questions about power, race and censorship in art.

Proulx is interested not only in the artist’s work, but also the story and prejudices told through the photographer’s lens.

“I think it easy to see, when you look at the work—you are looking through the eyes of a gay white man,” said Proulx. “And so that privilege carries through in how the photograph is constructed.”

Mapplethorpe’s work has spurred interesting conversations about race, gender and sexuality. The photographer has been criticized by others for taking advantage of his subjects, and placing them in very vulnerable and compromising positions to advance his own career and fulfill his ambitions of being a rich and famous artist, according to Proulx.

Mapplethorpe’s photos were not taken with an objective, neutral eye. The photographs displayed in the exhibition reflect how he saw the world.

“Part of thinking deeply about an artist like Mapplethorpe means getting past the laudatory text on the museum walls,” said Proulx. “When we look at his photographs, we certainly see masterful images, but we don’t quite see traces of a deeply problematic person, with some rather hateful views of the world.”

Mapplethorpe said he looked for perfection in form, regardless of what that form took. Indeed, once you get passed the graphic nature of the subject, the photo in itself is beautiful, with expertly crafted play of light and shadow, proportion and form.

The exhibition at the Michal and Renata Hornstein Pavilion of the MMFA is divided into several rooms, each showcasing a different aspect of Mapplethorpe’s career. The first room examines Mapplethorpe’s early works, including his attempts at jewelry-making.

Next are his famous portraits. Andy Warhol, Paloma Picasso, Richard Gere and Yoko Ono are but a few of New York’s upper crust immortalized by Mapplethorpe’s lens. These portraits, striking in their stylized nature, are a window into Mapplethorpe’s social ascent. Mapplethorpe wanted to be rich and famous, and he knew that to get there, he needed to be calculating in who he rubbed shoulders with. He was a masterful photographer—but his social climbing is what gained his photos notoriety.

The third section of the gallery is where his controversial X, Y and Z portfolios are displayed in their entirety. Mapplethorpe was known mainly for photographing flowers, the black male nude and homoerotic BDSM scenes. This section of the exhibition is structured in such a way that, if someone wished to skip his more graphic work, they could go through to the next room, which contains his flower stills and his examination of the body as sculpture.

In the fifth and final room, the exhibition touches on the controversy surrounding Mapplethorpe’s work, as well as the ideological conflicts that were happening in America at the time on subjects such as homosexuality, censorship of art and abortion. At the beginning of the 90s these issues polarized American society and, as shown on a museum label in the exhibit, Mapplethorpe’s work was part of the overall discussion.

“Part of teasing open his legacy is looking at how his celebrity [image] has been constructed in certain ways,” said Proulx. “There’s a lot of effort that goes into creating this spectacle of Mapplethorpe. Obviously, there’s a lot of money too and a lot of private interest, when you think of the museums, the donors, the collectors.”

For anyone with an interest in contemporary art history, this exhibition will be of interest. Putting his artistic genius aside,  Mapplethorpe has been logged into art history books because that’s exactly what he wanted—and by drawing on a specific network, that’s exactly what happened. In order to actually understand his work and the impact he has had, you’ll have to take a look at the photographs for yourself.

The exhibition can be viewed at the MMFA until Jan. 22. The museum is open Tuesday through Sunday, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tickets are $12 for visitors under the age of 30 and $20 for everyone over the age of 31.

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MALAISE will leave you feeling uneasy

Concordia fine arts graduates show the darkness of being human in a collective art show

MALAISE, an art show put on by six Concordia fine arts graduates, explores the raw and uneasy aspects of being human.

Last Thursday, artists Tessa Cameron, Katarzyna Chmielarz, Gabriela Gard Galiana, Ariana Sauder, Natalie Soble, and Liza Sokolovskaya—who go by the collective name The Group of Six in reference to the famed Canadian artists Group of Seven—welcomed a throng of admirers to Galerie 203 in Old Montreal, where the show will be mounted until Dec. 4.

“Everyone kind of pitched ideas of what they wanted to go for and a lot of it ended up being just morbid, uneasy themes,” said Gard Galiana of how they went about choosing their dark theme. “We chose the name ‘MALAISE’ to work around a few months ago, and we decided to do all our work according to that.”

The artists, who have all worked together in the past, kept close contact with each other throughout the process of creating the art for the show, explained Galiana, so as to make sure the feeling of malaise was cohesive throughout all the pieces. However, they each had a very unique way of interpreting it.

The collective effect of all these tableaus hung side-by-side is certainly disquieting.

Gard Galiana’s striking oil paintings represent individuals’ inner struggle through portraits that play with the concept of bondage; they are gagged, restrained, held back.

“My work was about fighting against yourself, hiding from your own secrets, your own insecurities, the fight within yourself,” said Gard Galiana. “People are tied up but it’s more to represent this uneasiness than anything sexual.”

Sauder’s portraits, painted in oil on canvas, have a blurry aesthetic that make the series look like snapshots of people caught in the rain, or seen through a foggy window. The feeling is highly eerie, and almost spectra. The same eeriness is felt in Sokolovskaya’s oil paintings, of out-of-focus close-ups of inanimate objects as one enters a home—“Buzzer #35” makes an everyday button seem ominous, and a lone lit lamp in a dark room in “Almost home” gives the sense that something sinister is lurking just behind the next wall.

Soble’s series of “Rorschach Girls”, painted in watercolour and ink on paper, immediately evokes an asylum or mental sanitarium. The twin sets of girls portrayed in mirror images seem to reference a chilling freak show-type atmosphere.

Death is present in animal form in Cameron’s work, with one painting of a taxidermied goat and another of a fur wig suspended ghost-like in mid air.

Chielarz also used ink to evoke a Japanese-style sketch series of “Les filles de la ville” shows figures hiding their faces while their naked bodies are made up of rows of crowded houses.

It took about four months to put everything together, and the girls did it all themselves from, obviously, creating the work, to scouting locations, to advertising and funding the show.

“We just started out, so the main goal for us is exposure,” said Gard Galiana. “Our location in the Old Port is great for us, you get a lot of tourists, a lot of people who are interested in buying art touring the galleries here.”

This is the second time the six of them have worked together, and they plan to do so again in the near future.

The pieces showcased are all on sale at Gallery 203, and range from $80 to $1300.

Gallery 203 is located at 227 Notre-Dame St. W. MALAISE is running until Dec. 4. For more information on the exhibition, visit galerie203.com.

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Tripping the light fantastic

Montreal photo artist illuminates the art world with psychedelic manipulations of light

Since the late 1990s, Montreal photographer Kiran Ambwani has been producing critically-acclaimed, award-winning images of people from various unique, ancient cultures all over the world. Her photos and exhibits have raised awareness about important social issues like women’s fight for equal rights, the everyday hardships of oppressed ethnic minorities, deplorable living conditions in poor developing nations, and the difficulties of preserving cultural traditions in the face of globalization. Her work has been praised for its success in visually expressing the complex emotional realities of these situations in a way that simply cannot be communicated with words.

Ambwani’s newest photo exhibit, Lumière Infinie / Infinite Light—which is on display at the Monument National until Nov. 23—is a radical departure from the style for which she has become known. Moving away from socio-culturally motivated photography, she decided to jump head-first into the realm of abstract art, and explore one of the most fundamental and universal elements of life: light.

Photographer Kiran Ambwani often created the pictures with a bit of improvisation, intuition and chance.

By embracing and experimenting with digital photo technology, she has created an unconventional series of abstract images featuring wild, psychedelic renderings of light. Bursting with energy, her pictures offer intense yet playful visuals that go from explosive patterns to unpredictable twisting and turning beams of colour that look like road maps for UFOs, often within a single photo.

“What really excited me about this project is that it was totally based on improvisation, chance and a little bit of intuition,” Ambwani said. “There was no photoshopping, or post-editing. It’s just me playing with the camera while aiming at oscillating light beams. I’d focus, take the shot, but, as I was shooting, I’d shake the camera, or randomly turn on an effect at the spur of the moment. Basically just doing whatever felt right and seeing what happened.”

Just like any kind of improvisatory art, a lot of what came about were moments of spontaneous magic. Some of the real time manipulated images that Ambwani captured look like overlapping luminous tadpoles heading in divergent directions, while others look like explosive shooting stars. Much like some of the beautiful music improvised onstage by artists like John Coltrane or Jimi Hendrix, spiritual beings who thought, worked, and expressed on higher planes of consciousness, what was produced invites and allows spectators to lose themselves in the moment. Looking at Ambwani’s photographic renderings of light often lures viewers into a meditative, hypnotic, trance-like state of mind.

The combination of psychedelic music and Ambwani’s photos could very likely take the human mind places it’s never been. “I’d love to do a live real time exhibit where projections of my images accompany the music of EDM DJs,” Ambwani said. In fact, Erik Amyot, organizer of the EDM Eclipse Festival, used her photo “Phosphorescence” for both the cover and title of Ilai Salvato’s new EP, on Amyot’s Tech Safari label.

It doesn’t look like Ambwani will be abandoning her trademark socio-culturally relevant photo work in favour of creating images for acid-heads to drool over anytime soon, though. She is even doing a project called Objets chéris, in which cancer patients pose with specific objects that have personal meaning and have helped them in their struggle. “Portraiture is really rewarding, I learn a lot, and I do feel it is important to raise awareness. The emotion that you can capture in a photograph of a person’s face can often tell a whole story which can really have a profound effect on viewers and hopefully inspire greater compassion and thoughtfulness.” Ambwani said. “I will definitely do more of those projects in the future. But, right now I am really enjoying what I’m doing, so for now I’ll go with the flow and see what happens.”

Kiran Ambwani’s Lumière Infinie / Infinite Light exhibit is on display at Monument National (1182 St-Laurent Blvd.) until Nov. 23. For more information on Ambwani’s work, visit kiranambwani.com.

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A peek into an alternate reality at VAV gallery

Three Concordia artists transform the VAV gallery into a bizarre space for the time of the exhibit.

Beyond The Frame explores the relationship between art, space and its audience

It starts as an artist’s idea; then, through a complex creative process, the idea finally rests upon a canvas, there for anyone to see and interpret. But what if the fourth wall was shattered, bringing reality and art together?

Three Concordia artists transform the VAV gallery into a bizarre space for the time of the exhibit.

The exhibit, Beyond The Frame, on display at the VAV gallery until Nov. 7, explores this bi-dimensionality with the work of three Concordia artists. Jonathan Theroux, Rihab Essayh, and Milo Flores have come together to create a peek into the alternate reality from the artists’ imagination. Using drawing and other mediums, they transformed the art gallery into an experimental installation studying the relationship between art and its viewers. It goes into the actual meaning and prominence of this said relationship and what the public can bring to the artwork.

A forest of black and white columns, weirdly evocating Beetlejuice’s stockings, welcomes you in the gallery space. Complemented by drawings, objects encouraging participation of the public and a surrealist video, the exhibit makes you wonder what is actually going on in this small, enclosed world.

According to the exhibit’s description, “the artist-curators all take up notions surrounding self, however within the expanded field of the exhibition, the works happen as a result of a viewer’s own experience.”

The exhibition really imposes a strong impression of being in an alternate reality. It is safe to assume that everyone passing by the gallery this week will have a very different interpretation of the exhibit. What Beyond The Frame represents is the way art can actually be present outside the traditional canvas and how we, as the public, actually are intermingled with it.

Beyond The Frame is presented at the VAV gallery situated at 1395 René-Lévesque Boul. until Nov. 7. For more information, visit vavgallery.concordia.ca.

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Experiencing and shaping art together

New creative project showing how solo art can become collective

Have you ever felt like your understanding of art can sometimes be very different from other people’s? When examining and interpreting a piece of art, our reception tends to be influenced by our past experiences, personal inclinations and preconceived notions.

Fernando Pessoa’s book, The Book of Disquiet, is a compilation of unfinished works put together after his death in 1935. It is surrounded with a continuous discourse concerning how it should be compiled and arranged. The piece’s unfinished qualities leave an interpretive and creative door open. PME-ART, along with the Leonard and Bina Ellen Art Gallery, have decided to use this to their artistic advantage with their new performative rewriting exhibit, Adventures can be found anywhere, même dans la mélancholie.

Fernando Pessoa’s book was assembled posthumously from various unfinished works. Photo by Lydia Anderson

To put it simply, the writers partnering with PME-ART are continuing the editing process. By rewording, cutting up, adding to, or shifting emotional connotations, these writers are adding pieces of themselves into Pessoa’s work. Gallery-goers are able to observe the process as it happens, interact with the writers and the text and observe the work that’s been produced thus far. Although acts of writing and reading are not usually practices paired with performance, this exhibit facilitates audience interaction and observation of an activity that can be said to be practiced, to an extent, by everyone.

A work creates a subjective experience for its reader because of what each reader emphasizes or brings to it. This concept is taken further by the performers implementing pieces of their own identities and subjectivities into the text. This project allows for a solitary activity to expand into a group experience. With no immediate, visual emphasis as the focus of the exhibit, the richness lies in the concept behind this activity. Its simplicity is what speaks to the audience, provoking thought about how we experience works of art all together.

According to Claudia Fancello, one of the performers at this exhibit, the presentation gives a rich experience to her as well. The silence of reading, the reading of passages aloud, and the sound of writing, are all elements which make her feel like she’s in conversation with her fellow performers, the page, and the text. As an author, Pessoa wrote behind a multitude of heteronyms; more than alibis, these were different voices with which the author could express himself. This fact, along with the unfinished nature of the compilation, allows the concept of authorship to be played with and expansion of the work to be creatively fruitful and tantalizing.

This performance looks at Pessoa’s work and sees something partly unfinished, but sees it as an asset with a potential to be celebrated. The goal is not so much to improve upon this work, but to perform it and to perform the concept of reading as an act of rewriting. It’s not to dishonour an artist’s piece, but to celebrate it by joining in the conversation and translating the text into our time and experiences. This activity provokes thought about how we experience art in what we bring to it and also about the potential of our art culture: how fading our individualistic practices holds the possibility of richer experiences and results.

The creative project is taking place at the Leonard and Bina Ellen Art Gallery until Nov. 1. For more information on the Adventure can be found anywhere, même dans la mélancholie project, visit ellengallery.concordia.ca.

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Revolutionary ideas and artistic protests, all in one cube

Visit the impressive installation situated in the EV building atrium. Photo by Frédéric T. Muckle

Printemps CUBEcois banner installation here to present the history of the Maple

We all experienced the social movement now known as the Maple Spring differently. Some of us participated actively to the countless demonstrations, others protested the movement, some simply read about it in daily newspapers and other media. Do you remember the myriad of banners, signs and even the iconic red cube (a three-dimensional representation of the red square) that roamed Montreal during the spring and summer of 2012?

Well, the exhibit Printemps CUBEcois gives you the chance to revisit those souvenirs of past protests, for better or for worse, with an installation created from iconic banners.

The exhibit, created by Montreal artist and archivist David Wingington, is co-presented by the Concordia Student Union (CSU) and the Artéfacts d’un Printemps québécois Archive.

Visit the impressive installation situated in the EV building atrium. Photo by Frédéric T. Muckle

The installation is described by the artist as a “retelling… of the 2012 student-led oppositional movement,” Wingington said in a statement describing the banner installation. “It is an attempt at self-representation which is key to building upon a movement’s own oppositional cultural heritage.”

Wingington also discards the idea of remembrance that the project could suggest to the audience. “It is a non-nostalgic activation of an archive that seeks to nurture the oppositional consciousness that was tenacious in 2012, in preparation for future struggles,” he said. “The cube’s interior represents a safer-space within which activists can meet and speak freely, to seek collective strength that may lead to future acts dissent and resistance.”

Still, one cannot help but go back in time for just a moment by looking at this unconventional arrangement of artistic protest signs. The cube-shaped canvas is also significant in how it reaches into our collective social imagination. With such a controversial and moving subject, the public is bound to develop their own interpretation of the exhibit. Nobody who was present in Montreal or anywhere else in Quebec can deny the importance of the Maple Spring. Today, remembering this short and socially active period in time can create sentiments of resentment for some, and profound nostalgic effervescence for others.

 For such a short exhibit to experience (most of you will probably simply pass by it whilst rushing to class this week), it can have a surprisingly strong effect on the person who will stop a second to really look at it. It is probably what determines relevant art forms from a simple artistic essay; it humbly but effectively makes you think, remember and feel.

 The banner installation is displayed at the Concordia EV building atrium until Oct. 18. Wingington will be present from Oct. 14 to Oct. 17. For more information about the Printemps CUBEcois exhibit, visit Archives: Imagerie d’un Printemps Érable’s facebook page.

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Remembering Aboriginal culture through art

Discussions on the relation between arts and the Aboriginal cultures will take place during the colloquium. Photo by Claude Latour.

The iakwé:iahre (we remember) colloquium looking into Aboriginal artistic facets

Concordia will be hosting the iakwé:iahre (we remember) colloquium to bring together Aboriginal artists and community members to produce a collective conversation about Aboriginal culture. This conference will be the first of its kind to be held in the province of Quebec. More precisely, this interesting group of artists and curators, assembled with the help of the Aboriginal Curatorial Collective (ACC), will expand on the theme of remembrance. This ode to memory will also be presented in the creation of “a living archive.”

This idea takes its roots in the centuries-old tradition of oral communication deeply anchored in the Aboriginal culture. By discussing and sharing, the people involved in the colloquium will focus on the act of remembering using the living archive.

Discussions on the relation between arts and the Aboriginal cultures will take place during the colloquium. Photo by Claude Latour.

Various artistic exhibitions will be presented in collaboration with the iakwé:iahre (we remember) colloquium. The Fofa gallery will be presenting Exhibiting the archive / Performing the archive, an exhibit exploring our relationship with Canada’s colonial past using the artworks of three aboriginal artists. Sonny Assu will be exploring this notion of the living archive with a mix of contemporary and more classical artistic style and techniques to act as a platform for the themes of remembrance.

Amy Malbeuf, a multi-disciplinary visual artist, will be exhibiting her work concerning the ways culture, nature, identity and history can all be intertwined together when looking at such elaborate topics. Emilie Monnet will also be offering a performance closely related to the dramatic tales of Missing and Murdered Aboriginal Women archived in the province of Quebec.

The VAV gallery will also be presenting Making A Mark, an exhibit focusing on the somewhat complex relationship between settlers and Aboriginal societies and how art can act as a way to communicate for those two populations. This exhibit will also be specifically presented to fit into the reflection process initiated by the ACC conference.

Other cultural activities and exhibitions will take place in relation to the colloquium to show how art is related to Aboriginal history and culture.

The three-day long colloquium, taking place mostly at Concordia, will open with artists’ works and events for Aboriginal artists such as Alanis Obomsawin and Jean-Marie Gros-Louis. During the weekend, various talks and happenings, both in French and English for the pleasure of Montreal’s bilingual population, will be addressing an array of topics all related to the Aboriginal culture. During those three days, Concordia will become the epicentre of necessary and engaging discussions.

Aboriginal Curatorial Collective’s iakwé:iahre (we remember) colloquium will be taking place at Concordia University from Oct.16 to 18. For more information about the colloquium schedule, visit iakweiahre.com.  

For more information about the Exhibiting the archive / Performing the archive exhibit, visit fofagallery.concordia.ca.

For more information about the Making A Mark exhibit, visit vavgallery.concordia.ca.

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Arts

From loud and intense to still and silent

From music to painting, Reiner works with differents mediums. Photo by Sara King-Abadi.

Anvil’s drummer put down his drum sticks a moment to deliver art exhibit

Robb Reiner is not only the drummer of the Canadian heavy metal band Anvil, but also a talented painter. His works, simple oil on canvas stills, are on display for the first time at the Silent Metal exhibit at the BBAM! Gallery.

Gallery owner Ralph Alfonso spearheaded the exhibit. Alfonso was the band’s publicist with Attic Records at the beginning of the metal phenomenon in the ‘80s when Anvil was enjoying moderate success. The band’s story is documented in the 2009 film, The Story of Anvil.

The film not only led to a second coming of Anvil, but the exposure of Reiner as a visual artist. There is a scene in the film where Reiner shows his studio. “Robb showed his paintings and I was flabbergasted. I worked with him and I had no idea he was a painter,” said Alfonso.

From music to painting, Reiner works with differents mediums. Photo by Sara King-Abadi.

Reiner hasn’t displayed his art in other galleries because it’s not for sale. He believes that if he were to sell his work it then “becomes a job.” For Reiner, the art is therapeutic. He relaxes in his studio, listens to music and paints, producing maybe three works per year. Reiner has produced a total of 52 paintings. Another reason Reiner doesn’t sell his work is that he intends to leave them to his son one day, “when it’ll probably be worth way more than now,” Reiner joked.

Vibrant, smooth lines and rich colours portray different locations and still-life objects: the anvil drum kit, a set of twin beds, a diner. Oh, and two portraits of bowel movements. Somehow, even the toilet bowl paintings are touching. Reiner’s art feels like an old friend.

The inspiration behind Reiner’s paintings are photographs he takes while on tour with Anvil. Reiner removes not only people, but birds, lights and any other fringe details from the photos when he sketches then paints them. The simplicity of the paintings allows the humanity to speak for itself.

Besides, every painting actually has a living subject, and that is Reiner. “I’m in every painting, I’m the one who took the photo, so I’m in it,” Reiner said.

“If you’re familiar with the work of Edward Hopper it’s kind of like that except there’s no people,” said Alfonso. He is referring to the artist behind “Nighthawks,” the famous painting of a couple sitting at the bar of a diner that is universally recognizable. And indeed, Reiner’s work has a similar haunting loneliness.

The paintings reflect the dichotomy of Reiner’s character, said Alfonso. The music he creates is loud and intense, yet his painting are still. There is a comfortable calmness to all 12 of the paintings from the curated exhibit.

Silent Metal is running from Sept. 25 – Oct. 6 at the BBAM! Gallery, 3255 St-Jacques St.

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Arts

FOFA’s vernissage opening with three new exhibitions

Contemporary arts take over the Fofa gallery for the 2014 Rentrée

Concordia’s faculty of fine arts has started the year with a bang: the faculty’s FOFA Gallery, located on the ground floor of Concordia’s EV building, held a vernissage Sept. 4 to usher in the new school year and its three newest exhibitions.

Photo by Nathalie Laflamme.

Parallax: Landscapes in Translation, located in the York corridor vitrine, is the collaborative project of Cynthia Hammond, Kelly Thompson and Kathleen Vaughan. The three artists, who all work for the university, used a variety of mediums, from acrylic on canvas to woven fibres, which often represented the departments they are a part of.

“The work is really talking about landscape and the passage of time, and travel, and discovery as you’re walking through spaces,” said Jennifer Dorner, the new FOFA Gallery director. “And it’s really functioning in that way, within the space itself.”

As visitors enter the main room of the gallery, they seem to topple into a completely different world, one of sharp black and whites and thumping bass: the world of Eyelash Wars. The product of the duo Inflatable Deities, also known, individually, as Emily Pelstring and Jessica Mensch, Eyelash Wars is the story of two beauty vendors in a battle for commercial supremacy. The piece is backed by a “warped new-age rap soundtrack,” as described by the FOFA Gallery site. The display is also visible from the Ste-Catherine vitrine.

“It’s a really fun premise,” added Dorner. “It’s very playful, a little bit absurd…They’ve used a really nice range of technology, and performance and painting, and really recreated the space.”

The last exhibit, That innate and ineradicable craving for what is out of the common proves how glad we are to have the natural and tedious course of things interrupted, occupies the Black Box room of the gallery. An interactive work by Jérôme Nadeau, the exhibit is composed of light-sensitive photographic papers on a white table. Visitors are encouraged to don white gloves and move the papers around, causing them to slowly shift in colour. Every hour, a picture of the table is taken and uploaded to the FOFA website, allowing viewers to track the changes in the gallery.

“His idea is that the photographic paper becomes the document of the exhibition experience,” said Dorner. “It’s a beautiful piece, and it’s going to change as the exhibition goes on.”

The vernissage concluded with a musical performance by Inflatable Deities in the main gallery. The current exhibitions will be on display until Oct. 19. The FOFA Gallery is located on the ground floor of the EV Building in the Sir George Williams campus.

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