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Views of "PURPLE RAIN" by Raùl Aguilar Canela, Diagonale, 2024 © Mike Patten
Charline Dally, le disque de poussière (2023), thermoformed glass. Production by Le Fresnoy - Studio national des arts contemporains.
MEET THE ARTIST 06.01 & 06.15 Charline Dally will be at the gallery to chat with you about her exhibition. SOMATIC TOURS 06.08 & 06.15, 11 a.m. - 12 p.m. Discover this womb of things to be through a somatic mediation exploring movement and individual sensorialities and guided by Audrée-Jade Ravary. Free and open to all RSVP required, places limited + |
THIS WOMB OF THINGS TO BE
Charline Dally 05.02 - 06.15 Opening - 05.02 at 6 p.m. “still there are seeds to be gathered, and room in the bag of stars”[1] Combining a scientific approach with a poetic reflection, Charline Dally's work attempts to decipher the messages engraved on lunar stone fragments dating back hundreds of millions of years. this womb of things to be is intended as a receptacle for an archaeology of the future, a geological excavation on an infinitesimal scale to rethink our relationship with minerals and, more generally, with living things. le disque de poussière combines scientific archive documents, 3D modelling and commentary by Hugues Leroux, astromineralogy researcher, and Anne-Marie Blanchenet, engineer. The film shows these geolinguists[2] as their attempts to interpret the information engraved in the stone come up against the limits of their technological tools. While microscopic observation of meteorite particles enables us to understand their structure, it also reveals the fragility of the message engraved in the material, in the form of lines and curves that evolve with impacts and thermal changes. The images in these writings come alive to refute the inert nature of the mineral: the water present in the universe infiltrates these wounds and sutures them with its healing properties. Inspired by this resilient behaviour, Charline Dally proposes a semantic study to translate, read and then narrate the stories of the dust that underlies the creation of the solar system, revealing the experience of what appears to us to be frozen, movement within the fixity. To further immerse us in this intimate installation of floating fabrics, the room is interspersed with a series of mica arranged on organically shaped seats. These entities require attentive listening to their silent prose. Reminiscent of Ursula K. Le Guin's theory of the recipient, the gallery’s space contains this womb of things to be, a glass sculpture whose water-filled fissures allude to body memory and the phenomenon of healing, facilitated by the percolation of water in the interstices. Finally, musical arrangements, to be listened to in a jukebox evoking the multiple possible interpretations of a mineral score, and archives of microscopic views add to the varied and sensitive body of work that Dally arranges to engross us in her universe. Whether confronted with a temporality all too fleeting for the human mind, or with vertiginously abstract measurement units, or with the challenge of grasping forthcoming exobiological discoveries, the exhibition summons our humility for overcoming the complexity of reality and for cohabiting, becoming-with[3], together. Time carves, shapes, contains traumas, and heals them, too. [1] Ursula K. Le Guin, “The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction”, Dancing at the Edge of the World, Grove Press, New York, 1989. [2] Ursula K. Le Guin, “The Author of the Acacia Seeds”, The Compass Rose, Harper Perennial, New York, 1982. [3] Donna J. Haraway, Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene, Duke University Press, Durham and London, 2016. |
Views of the exhibition "THIS WOMB OF THINGS TO BE" by Charline Dally, Diagonale, 2024 © document original
CHRYSOTILES ACTIVÉS
Mathieu Grenier 02.8 - 13.4 Opening - 02.8 at 6 p.m. Chrysotiles Activés discerns what stands on, within and beyond the threshold: what once was and what will be. In space at Diagonale, Mathieu Grenier's artwork reflects on the concepts of liminality and oscillation. Through an exclusive body of work, the artist examines our times from a metamodernism perspective. This complex, philosophical theory, which at times negotiates with an enthusiastic, idealist and progressive modernism, and at other times with a cynical, nihilist and obsolete post-modernism, is a thread running through the exhibition. The Monitors' toned cyanotypes continue the experimental research initiated by the artist in 2023 around these age-old photographic processes and vernal e-waste language. The conceptual artwork combines a masterful composition with meticulous work with the chemical conversions that give the fabrics their unique colorations. The cryptic identification of electronic debris and material residue requires an attentive contemplation of the canvases, which reveal the spectral traces of our unbridled consumption achieved through a time-consuming technique. The encounter between these two antinomic technological temporalities anchors us in the reality of the moment. Two series of upgraded works also complement the exhibition. Suspended from the ceiling and powered by a battery, headrests with integrated screens broadcast images captured while driving. A blend of disillusioned environmentalism and conscious over-consumption, these road-trip images shot in 35mm bear witness to the contradictions of our times. New digital collages, Crystal Gazers, which play on anachronistic images and alienating hyperconnectivity, are a further addition to Chrysotiles Activés’ installation. They offer an eloquent and satirical insight into our society, at the crossroads of sincere irony and pragmatic utopia. With sensitivity and insight, Mathieu Grenier reveals our preoccupations and our paradoxes: despite a future we know to be chimerical, we strive to find meaning, even if we delude ourselves. Chrysotiles Activés operates as an oxymoron, suggesting that we sink into the dissonant both-neither[1] interstice, hoping to undermine, or even transcend, an ossified system. [1] Timotheus Vermeulen & Robin van den Akker (2010) Notes on metamodernism, Journal of Aesthetics & Culture, 2:1, DOI: 10.3402/jac.v2i0.5677 |
© Mathieu Grenier
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Views of the exhibition "CHRYSOTILES ACTIVÉS" by Mathieu Grenier, Diagonale, 2024 © document original
Bianca Baldi, Play-White, 2019. Vidéo couleur, son stéréo, 10 min 45 s © Bianca Baldi
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MOMENTA x Diagonale
SEPIA BIANCA BALDI 09.8-10.21 Opening 09.8 at 5p.m. Baldi’s exhibition unfolds around the video Play-White (2019), which the artist presents as a loose adaptation of African-American writer Nella Larsen's novel Passing. In South Africa, “play white” is a common term for Black or biracial people who, as a ruse, pass themselves off as white. Baldi’s appropriation of this racist term engages in a hybrid reflection on the unstable nature of identity. The video juxtaposes images that were filmed at the Mediterranean Institute of Oceanography in Marseille with a polyphonic story narrated in a voice-over portraying three “white” voices, who are sometimes interrupted by the powerful singing voice of a Whitney Houston impersonator singing excerpts of the song I Have Nothing. On screen, the behavior of a cuttlefish temporarily removed from its natural environment alters its own pigmentation in response to quotes taken from the novel. Exhibition produced in partnership with Momenta. This exhibition is funded by Flanders State of the Art. |
Views of the exhibition "SEPIA" by Bianca Baldi, Diagonale, 2023 © Mike Patten
........................................................................................................................................ CONVERSATION JULIA PICCOLO + ALESSANDRA PONTE 05.27, 2pm In the context of "Stretch", Julia Piccolo invited Alessandra Ponte - professor at the School of Architecture of the UDM - to discuss the issues related to her exhibition. - Alessandra Ponte is Full professor at the École d’architecture, Université de Montréal. She has also taught at the IUAV (Venice), the schools of architecture of Princeton University and Cornell University, at Pratt Institute (New York) and the ETH (Zurich). Since 2008, she has been responsible for the Phyllis Lambert International Seminar, a series of colloquia held at the Université de Montréal. Curator of the exhibition Total Environment: Montreal 1965-1975(Canadian Center for Architecture, Montreal, 2009), she also collaborated to the exhibition and catalogue God & Co: François Dallegret Beyond the Bubble (with Laurent Stalder and Thomas Weaver, London: Architectural Association Publications, 2011). She contributed to the Canadian Pavilion for the Venice Biennale in 2014 Artic Adaptation and 2016 Extraction. Among her recent publications: The House of Light and Entropy (London: AA Publications, 2014) and the series Architecture et Information 2.0//2017, Architecture et Information 2.0//2018, Architecture et Information 2.0// 2020, Architecture/Territoire/Information 4.0//2021, Architecture/Territoire/Information 4.0//2022 (École d’architecture, Université de Montréal, 2017, 2018, 2020, 2021, 2022). ........................................................................................................................................ |
STRETCH
JULIA PICCOLO 04.20-06.3 Opening 04.20, 6pm Julia Piccolo extracts textile materials from a world that – according to the collective and patriarchal imagination – is assigned to women, craftwork, and domesticity. She explores the plasticity of woven material, bringing it into virtual and conceptual spaces and other fields such as architecture and the decorative arts. Using different techniques (painting, sculpture, digital tools), the artist establishes an organic relationship with space with supple works that espouse and adapt to their environment. There is an ancestral and intimate connection between architecture and textiles. Fibres and skins are worked to make clothes or nomadic homes. They evoke notions of shelter, protection, vulnerability, the intimacy of home. Coexisting membranes are also eluded to: the human skin, more than human, plant and animal fibres. A fusion as deliberate as it is unconscious takes place between space, fibres, and visible and invisible bodies. Layer by layer, Piccolo excavates an ancient history that connects humanity to threads and fibres. Personal and collective stories accumulate. Her multicolored sculptures speak of extrusions, referencing infinite material mechanically unfurled. Like the artist’s painting that measures more than 20 meters long, evoking a strange landscape. The relationship between the mediums and their habitat is porous. The sculpture melds into the paint and vice versa. The digital and organic forms are also connected by successive layers of contrasting colors and multiple motifs. The latter recall our own memories and experiences. Reflecting sampled lives, the works evoke a timeless collective story that knows no bounds. A story, both compact and stretched out, of our past, present and future existences, in which Piccolo highlights movement, openness, and depth. Julie Crenn | Translated by Sarah Knight Julia Piccolo would like to thank the Conseil des arts for its financial support |
Views of the exhibition "STRETCH" by Julia Piccolo, Diagonale, 2023 © alignements
THREE SCORES FOR DAWN AND DUSK
LOU SHEPPARD 01.26-03.11 Opening, 01.26 at 6pm + Performance "Pas de deux" at 6:30pm. Kizis and Winnie Ho will perform "Pas de Deux". Based on the score by Lou Sheppard. Approx 20 minutes Throughout his practice Nova Scotia-based artist Lou Sheppard investigates queerness through the use of data, language systems, archival research and scientific processes. In the exhibition 'Three Scores for Dawn and Dusk' Sheppard assembles work that engage with his explorations into what constitutes queer time. |
DIAGONALE X CICA
ARTIST TALK: LOU SHEPPARD 01.27, 6-7:30pm At Concordia and via Zoom Presented by Conversations in Contemporary Art in collaboration with Diagonale, Lou Sheppard will discuss his career and work, including his most recent exhibition, THREE SCORES FOR DAWN AND DUSK exhibiting at Diagonale until March 11. |
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View of the exhibition "Three Scores for Dawn and Dusk" by Lou Sheppard, Diagonale, 2023 © Jean-Michael Seminaro
Paul Maheke, "Portrait of a Ghost XIV", 2022. Courtesy of the artist, Sultana Paris and Goodman Gallery ........................................................................................................................................ DIAGONALE X CICA
ARTIST TALK: PAUL MAHEKE “Pull out/ Se retirer” 09.16, 6:00pm EST VA-114 (Concordia) and on Zoom Looking back on selected projects, Paul Maheke focuses on the ways in which the invisible and the visible interact inside his artistic practice. This event is presented in collaboration with CICA. Paul Maheke's exhibition, “As the Days Move Into Nights,” is on view at Diagonale until October 22, 2022. Paul Maheke will attend via Zoom. Snacks served on site. |
AS THE DAYS MOVE INTO NIGHTS
PAUL MAHEKE 09.8 - 10.22 Curator: Chloé Grondeau With a focus on decolonial ideas, Congolese-born French artist Paul Maheke uses a variety of media to explore the body as a site of memory, archive, and identity construction. His familiars, presented for the first time in Canada – including older works and new pieces produced during an in situ residency – are placed in dialogue in As The Days Move Into Nights at Diagonale. Here, Maheke devotes himself to bodies, installations, sound works, and alternative paths of thought to propose zones of resistance and conversations around crossings, transitions, and transmissions. Drawings and texts excerpted from his personal journal, referring to a traumatic personal event, are deployed on body-sized coloured surfaces. Visitors thus become engaged in his emancipatory process of self-portraiture, which tends to dissolve individual experience in order to foster collective empowerment. In the series titled Portrait of a Ghost, Maheke evokes the ghost as a cathartic figure that suggests transition from one state to another. In the two works shown here, it takes on the features, successively of a night owl – the folkloric symbol of the messenger – and a monster whose mouth is surrounded with colour. The fragmented work Reflections and Unresolved Shadows is composed of a sound piece and a drawing of the artist lying down, his head turned. The first component evokes Maheke’s emphasis on giving voice and material to those who are made invisible. The second component emits sounds that impact the flesh and bones of visitors, establishing a form of touch without physical contact. This bodily state reflects the cosmology of ancient Congo. The drumming is a way of connecting collectively to ancestors through the vibrations that they release, becoming a tool for transferring nonverbal information. “The Equinox is just behind me. An emotional release that feels tidal.” (1) Texts, astrology, and fabric intertwine in As Saturn and Jupiter Conjunct. Maheke’s private thoughts resonate with the stars, enabling him to escape the rationality of Western thought, indicating his commitment to alternative and minoritized discourses. This work, comprising words appended to a permeable medium, invites us to think about the world as a whole within which human and non-human are connected and there is no longer a hierarchy between nature and culture. Two-person and solo performances of The Origin Of Death will take place during the exhibition, extending the conversation on the embodiment of the collective as a form of transmission. -- (1) Text excertp from the work As Saturn and Jupiter Conjunct Paul Maheke, A fire circle for a public hearing (2022), a High Line Performance, New York City.
Photo by Liz Ligon. Courtesy the High Line |
RESIDENCY
PAUL MAHEKE
August 2022
Paul Maheke was in residence during the month of August.
After studying at ENSA Paris-Cergy, Paris and Open School East, London, Paul Maheke’s works and performances have been shown at Tate Modern, London, the Venice Biennale, Centre Pompidou, Palais de Tokyo and Lafayette Anticipations in Paris, Baltic Triennial 13, Manifesta 12, Cabaret Voltaire, Zurich and Chisenhale Gallery, London, amongst others. In 2021, he was shortlisted for the Future Generation Art Prize and included in British Art Show 9.
With a focus on dance and through a varied and often collaborative body of work comprising performance, installation, sound and video, Maheke considers the potential of the body as an archive in order to examine how memory and identity are formed and constituted.
Views of the exhibition "As The Days Move Into Nights" by Paul Maheke, 2022, Diagonale. Image credits: Jean-Michael Seminaro
Maude Bernier Chabot, "Quelque chose comme", 2022
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QUELQUE CHOSE COMME
MAUDE BERNIER CHABOT 04.28 - 06.4 Quelque chose comme brings together recent and past works by Maude Bernier Chabot that reflect upon the hidden coexistence of pain and the female experience. Through a reinterpretation of the art of traditional anatomical and mortuary casting, the artist emphasises the materiality that dominates her forms. While traditional casting is otherwise used to foster learning and commemoration through a recognizable subject, these sculptures evade direct identification. The misshapen forms are more evocative than illustrative, reminding us that the material is not an end, but a continual process onto which sculpture imposes a limit. Beneath the surface of Bernier Chabot’s work, the female body expresses itself through a perspective renewed by maternity. The fantasized body, producer or nourisher, now knows an unmentionable violence. The artist evokes the physical and moral tearing apart of a complex, scarred and sensual body that is systematically simplified, smoothed and flattened by the representation from which she wishes to escape. She strives to maintain a certain tension in the form, a feeling of uncertainty that situates the viewer somewhere between confrontation and conversation with the object. The density of the material brings a certain corporality to the physical reception of the work. The oddly sensual and repulsive textures intrigue through their powerful vulnerability. Bernier Chabot’s carnal and animal references become blurred, as if sublimated, and in this respect they raise a constant element of doubt. The surreptitiously reassuring fragments are infused with a malaise as visceral as it is deceptive. Curious and uneasy, we think we recognize what we do wish not to see. Every orifice is an open door onto our imagination though, ultimately, the plastic reality of the objects gets in the way. From up close, the artifice is exposed. Our worst fears dissipate once we’ve absorbed the shock, so much so that, as we contemplate the work, we must acknowledge and reflect upon our own animality. Dominique Sirois-Rouleau - Translated by Sarah Knight |
Views of the exhibition « Quelque chose comme » by Maude Bernier Chabot, Diagonale, 2022 © Jean-Michael Seminaro (images 1 et 2) © Maude Bernier Chabot (Image 3)
MANIDOOWEGIN MARIA HUPFIELD 01.27 - 03.19 Sculptural garments handstitched from industrial felt have recurred throughout Maria Hupfield’s object-making practice. Activated through performance, animation takes on double meaning when felt and wool are considered. Wool, introduced by the 17th century fur trade, was deeply integrated into Indigenous garment knowledge. In Anishinaabemowin, fine woolen trade cloth was named manidoowegin, an animate noun which translates as spirit skin, reflecting its inner properties. Wool’s capacity to wick moisture away from the body and dry without warping or hardening greatly enhanced comfort and winter survival. Wool and beads joined an artistic repertoire of living media: hide, quill, shell, copper, and wood. Further, Indigenous objects – whether humble or ceremonial – are often viewed as sentient beings – carrying and communicating memory, story, and serving as witness. Industrial felt blends wool and synthetic materials to form a thick durable material. Its most compelling qualities are visual warmth, flexibility and sculptural potential. Unlike other clothing materials, felt does not require a body to maintain its shape. When removed, it remembers the body that wore it. More recently Hupfield has used felt for appliquéd text, and newer works include recycled t-shirts, sequins, and ribbon. We have always welcomed the beautiful and the useful. Sequins first appeared in the 19th century, and now swirl on the powwow dance floor. As we have made materials our own, we have also appropriated the T-shirt as communicative space. Objects remember. The painstaking gesture of each stitch sews intention, thought, and emotion into the work, while performance releases it. Following performance, the works are carefully placed within the exhibit. → |
Maria Hupfield, "MANIDOOWEGIN", Diagonale, 2022. Image : J. Bascom
The gallery space resonates with the memory of sound and movement. Ribbons have the potential to sway. The cones, larger than those on jingle dresses, have different tones, but are sewn in familiar rows, taking their place in a material genealogy of dew claws, shells, metal cones, and tin jingles that echoed the body’s movements. Like the objects sleeping in museum drawers, Hupfield’s sculpted forms are always ready to move, to dance, to be held. As important as the carefully made objects are, the apparatus of display shifts wearable forms into abstractions. Painted wooden poles and plank structures sometimes stand in for the human body, but at other times move them away from the body and open their narrative potential. Grounded in tradition, standing with contemporary struggle, they lean into the future. These are not simple stories. Sherry Farrell Racette |
View of the exhibition « Manidoowegin » by Maria Hupfield, Diagonale, 2022 © Mike Patten
CICA X DIAGONALE A discussion with Maria Hupfield 03.17, 5pm-6:30pm Capacity limited to 20 people at a time: doors open at 4:45pm and close at 5pm with a live feed @cicaconcordia Conversations in Contemporary Art (CICA) and Diagonale are proud to present a gallery tour and discussion with Maria Hupfield, in the context of her exhibition "Manidoowegin". |
Maria Hupfield is a 2020-2022 inaugural Borderlands Fellow for her project "Breaking Protocol" at The Vera List Center for Art and Politics at the New School and the Center for the Imagination in the Borderlands at Arizona State University, and was awarded the Hnatyshyn Mid-career Award for Outstanding Achievement in Canada 2018. She has exhibited and performed her work through her touring solo exhibition "The One Who Keeps On Giving" (organized by The Power Plant) 2017-2018, and solo Nine Years Towards the Sun, at the Heard Museum, Phoenix, 2019-2020. Amongst other places, she has also presented her work at the Montreal Museum of Contemporary Art, the NOMAM in Zurich, the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Galerie de L’UQAM, Galerie Hugues Charbonneau, Patel Brown, the New York Smithsonian Museum of the American Indian, the New York Museum of Art and Design, BRIC House Gallery, the Bronx Museum, Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Site Santa Fe, and the National Gallery of Canada. She is co-owner of Native Art Department International with her husband artist Jason Lujan. She’s a member of the Anishinaabek People and belongs to Wasauksing First Nation in Ontario. She’s currently an Assistant Professor in Indigenous Performance and Media Art, and a Canadian Research Chair in Transdisciplinary Indigenous Arts, at the University of Toronto in Mississauga (UTM).
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Views of the exhibition « Manidoowegin » by Maria Hupfield, Diagonale, 2022 © Mike Patten
Léuli Eshrāghi, re(cul)naissance, 2020. Installation view, Biennale of Sydney, 2020.
Photo: Jessica Maurer. Commissioned by the Biennale of Sydney. Courtesy of the artist |
MOMENTA x Diagonale
THE END IS WHERE WE START FROM Léuli Eshrāghi 09.8 – 10.23.2021 Curator: Stefanie Hessler, with the collaboration of Camille Georgeson-Usher, Maude Johnson and Himali Singh Soin Exhibition presented by MOMENTA Biennale de l’image and produced in partnership with Diagonale Léuli Eshrāghi proposes Indigiqueer defiance to destructive colonial relations with nature from ia position as a fa’afafine, nonbinary Sāmoan-Persian artist. The installation re(cul)naissance conjures Fe’e, the octopus god of war of Sāmoan mythology, through iridescent fabric and neon signs with French and Sāmoan words, and a video showing people tenderly touching one another. Eshrāghi honours human-animal kinship, pleasure, and connectivity to come after what ia refers to as “Gregorian shame-time.” This understanding of time is based in notions of linearity, property, and impurity introduced by missionaries and colonizers to Sāmoa and other places in the Pacific and beyond. In Eshrāghi’s work, destructive relations with land, water, and other entities are replaced by touch and affect beyond taboos imposed by Western cultures. |
Léuli Eshrāghi, The end is where we start from, exhibition views presented at Diagonale as part of MOMENTA 2021. Photo: Jean-Michael Seminaro
From left to right: Julien Prévieux, What Shall We Do Next ? (Sequence #2), 2014. Karine Savard, Afficher le travail (détails), 2021
HUMAN CAPITAL
JULIEN PRÉVIEUX AND KARINE SAVARD
Curators: Chloé Grondeau and Anne-Marie St-Jean Aubre
04.15 - 06.5
The industrial buildings of avenue De Gaspé, which today are home to studios and artist-run centres, were until recently the site of large-scale garment manufacturers. The gentrification of Mile-End has been in progress for many years. Artists, who first arrived in the area about twenty years ago, will soon have to vacate their spaces to make way for start-ups and other creative enterprises. This is also the case just north of the railway tracks, in Mile-Ex, another former industrial area that is now the nucleus for artificial intelligence development in the city. Co-working spaces, which have become more common in Mile-End over the past fifteen years, are telling examples of how the rapid growth of the gig economy has forever changed today’s working conditions. Interestingly, in terms of lifestyle, this workforce shares many of the same characteristics as the artist’s way of life: flexibility, autonomy, creativity, but also precarity, solitude, and a vocational aspect whereby work increasingly encroaches on one’s free time.
Karine Savard, who designs movie posters for a living, has used her personal experience and changes in her neighborhood to analyze the evolution of the labour market. Mile-End, where Diagonale is located, is known for having one of the largest concentrations of cultural workers in Canada, ranking it among the trendiest neighbourhoods in the world. During the first half of the 20th century, however, this multiethnic area was considered one of the poorest in the city, where many new immigrants found work as manual labourers in the garment industry. After researching through Vidéographe’s film collection, Savard has woven together a story that highlights the solidarity between these workers and their efforts to secure better working conditions. From her findings, the following question has emerged: “What if, today, the figure of the exploited worker suddenly resembled the liberated artist?” What if the neighborhood’s history was being repeated? The documentary film De fil en aiguille (1979) gives voice to female factory workers from the Chabanel district, whose buildings, much like the ones on avenue De Gaspé, have over the past year welcomed the same artists who were forced to abandon their Mile End studios due to rent increases.
The fragmentation of work into low-paying, repetitive tasks was the common lot of these textile workers, and their gestures give rhythm to the documentary’s narrative. In What Shall We Do Next? (2006-2011 /2014), Julien Prévieux draws our attention to other kinds of actions. In particular, to the gestures that have been patented by multinational tech companies such as Samsung, Apple, Google, and Sony, essentially giving them property rights over the hand movements used to activate their now ubiquitous applications, or technologies that might be developed in the future. Technologies such as tactile screens, and their associated gestures, have transformed the way we work by facilitating various procedures and making them quicker and easier. These technologies have an impact on productivity, and patents ensure that the potential capitalization of these inventions will benefit their owners. When a company owns the rights to a set of gestures, it transforms these into depersonalized objects. And yet, these gestures can only be effective or productive if they are physically embodied. Just how far can capitalism go in its push to instrumentalize human beings? Prévieux’s work digs deeper into how businesses appropriate our everyday movements. Since digital tools are used in all aspects of our lives, they risk transforming us into a “workforce” without our knowledge. By reclaiming patented gestures and using them as the raw material for his choreography, and thus releasing them from their purely practical function, Prévieux creates a kind of act of resistance.
The notion of “human capital” is both an economic concept and a more intuitive expression, commonly used to create links between an individual, their work, performance, and salary. The expression emerged when employers stopped seeing their employees as interchangeable units, but rather as workers with assets (knowledge, talent, skills) that could help their businesses grow. A person’s human capital is what they have to offer: it is characterized by their level of training and experience, which are proof of their skills, which in turn reflects their productivity, and thus, justifies their salary. For a business, human capital is its workforce understood as an asset. Investing in human capital means finding ways to maximize the potential of employees and individuals in order to increase the company’s returns. Following this logic, workers become exploitable resources rather than individual beings. Perhaps in response to this objectification of service sector employees, young professionals have embraced freelance work, which has continuously grown over the past several years.
Crowdsourcing microtasks through digital platforms such as Amazon’s Mechanical Turk, where one can buy or sell services, encourages the segmentation of jobs into often poorly paid tasks. According to Policy Horizons Canada, a federal organization that conducts foresight, “Canada is already one of the largest suppliers and demanders of online labour on task platforms.” If technological advances, which claim to increase access to jobs, offer the mirage of progress, the system remains dangerously reminiscent of the kind of poorly-paid piecework the majority of Montreal’s garment manufacturers were built upon. Is platform capitalism revolutionary, or a step backwards? Julien Prévieux and Karine Savard’s research has led to the creation of works that reflect on the present while drawing lessons from the past. They shed light on the flawed logic that artists must work to unravel, and encourage us to imagine a workplace future that is beneficial to all.
This exhibition is presented in collaboration with the Musée d’art de Joliette
Views of the exhibition "Human capital", Diagonale, 2021 © Mike Patten
Leisure, "Second Image: Beginning of Summer. In the garden of a wine tavern", 2020
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WHAT IS THE WILL OF LOVE ?
LEISURE 17.09 - 31.10.20 (extended until 02.27) Leisure entrusts the Diagonale gallery with “What is the will of love?”, a personal proposal imagined around the play “Wie man wird, was man ist: Lebensgeschichten” (“How to Become Who You Are: Life Stories”) [1] by Lina Loos. Founded by artists Meredith Carruthers and Susannah Wesley, the duo proposes a thinking of the female or even human condition through a formal abstraction of this autobiographical piece’s acts. In this theatrical work, the Viennese writer and actress Lina Loos [2], who was born in 1882 and died in 1950, stages an emancipation of her state of women-object through the portrayal of the main character, Ali [3]. Moving through a set first designed by others for her and then by her, she offers an account of the physical and psychological confinement she experienced during her short marriage to architect Adolph Loos up until the point where she asserts her autonomy, drawing on ideas considered radical at the time, such as sexual or creative freedom and motherhood outside of marriage. Drawing from this literary material and the issues it raises, Leisure displays, throughout the Diagonale space, six collages printed on fabric and interspersed with sculptures. Topped with short text extracts from Lina Loos’ stage directions, each piece of fabric crystalizes an act of the play and features: drawings of the set, typical photographs from the period, samplings from the duo’s previous pictorial work and images from 20th century women authors. For their part, the sculptures highlight the protagonist’s internal journey, her transition from one reflective state to another, and her birth as an active subject. Navigating the space between organic and inorganic – through their formal compositions or asperities – they also imagine the meeting between the title of Loos’ work “How To Become Who You Are” and that of the exhibit: “What is the will of love?”. The character of Ali, using the latter question, attempts to break down the barriers that exist in love, and by extension, within systemic norms at play: “Love wants to grow, expand. It wants to include animals, plants, all things, it wants to embrace the whole world”[4]. She opens up the critical perspective of the female and human condition to that of the living being, and in doing so surpasses the limits of her own individuality to embrace a fragmented reflection regarding this newly-found renaissance. Within this perspective, Leisure materializes an echo to contemporary issues and the confinement sustained over the last few months. A singular space-time that has led them to interrogate social and societal frameworks as we know them: “What could our next steps look like if they were based on Ali’s question of ‘What is the will of love?’ And what if we met the world anew with a perspective of changed borders and with the priorities of a ‘love for all’ that is ecological, intersectional, and collaborative?”. [5] Chloé Grondeau/ Translation by Dominique Bernier-Cormier This project has been generously supported by the Canada Council for the Arts. |
Views of the exhibition "What is The Will of Love ?" by Leisure, Diagonale, 2020-21 © Edwin Isford
From top to bottom: Image 1: Danica Dakic, "First Shot", 2007-08 // Image 2: View of the exhibition "Histoires Histoire". From top to bottom: Jumana Manna, "A Sketch of Manners (Alfred Roch's Last Masquerade)", 2013; Olivier Vadrot, "Circo Minimo", 2020 © Diagonale // Image 3 et 4: Views of the exhibition "Histoires Histoire". Fron left to right: Caroline Monnet, "Ojigabwe", 2020; Mai-Thu Perret, "Society is a Hole", 2009, courtesy of the artist and David Kordansky Gallery, Los Angeles © Diagonale // Image 5: "LaToya Ruby Frazier Takes on Levis," from Art21's New York Close Up series |
Histoires Histoire
DANICA DAKIC, JUMANA MANNA, CAROLINE MONNET, MAI-THU PERRET, LATOYA RUBY FRAZIER/Art21, OLIVIER VADROT Curator: Chloé Grondeau Histoires Histoire is the first part of a series of exhibition and reflective contexts that take as their starting point the writings of the Polish researcher in feminist theories and memory studies, Marianne Hirsch. Proposing to think about the mobility of memory and the potential of History, the exhibition crosses the gaze of artists from the international scene whose (re)reading of History highlights their ability to propose new avenues through the insemination - ever increasing - of the narrative. The works presented in the form of videos, texts, objects and installations thus reveal a shared memory, tackling historical events and socio-political contexts which, in encountering personal or fictional narrative, form tools in the hands of artists to work on the factual as a material and as entry point to varied perspectives. ------------------------------------------------------ IMPORTANT - Following the Quebec Government’s measures in the frame of the covid-19 progression, Diagonale will be closed as of March 18 until further notice. Thank you for your understanding, hope to see you soon! PODCAST - HISTOIRES HISTOIRE - Listen to the guided tour of the exhibition Histoires Histoire narrated by the curator. (french version) |
Jonas St. Michael, "La Facciata" (Film still), 2016
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LA FACCIATA
JONAS ST. MICHAEL 09.6 - 11.9 / Opening on September 6, 5pm Jonas St. Michael’s art practice draws from the interactions that exist between an image and different settings that transcend humans on an individual level. These socio-political or institutional contexts are re-examined by the Montreal-based artist through photography. At Diagonale, his exhibition titled La Facciata takes us through the heart of the Villa Necchi Campiglio, in Milan. Built in the 1930s for the Necchi sisters—wealthy heirs of the Necchi sewing machine factories—this luxurious, modernist mansion has since been transformed into a “museum-house.” Through a range of mediums, Jonas St. Michael crystalizes its domestic interiors into a porous encounter between personal narrative—embodied by the former residents’ artefacts such as velour-covered sofas, ornamental tapestries, heavy draperies, and art objects—and the building’s reclassification as a heritage site. By highlighting the passage from intimate dwelling to public space and the subsequent shift toward a fictionalized reality, St. Michael underlines issues of hierarchy and power within this architectural space, now open to our collective interpretation. Translate by Jo-Anne Balcaen AROUND THE EXHIBITION - ARTIST TALK / JONAS ST. MICHAEL 11.1, 3:30pm Jonas St. Michael will present his exhibition "La Facciata", currently at Diagonale. (in english) |
Views of the exhibition "La Facciata" by Jonas St Michael, Diagonale, 2019. Images 1 and 2 © Diagonale. Image 3 © Jonas St Michael.
(IM)POSSIBLE LABOR
MARIE-ANDRÉE GODIN 04.11 - 06.8 / Opening 11.04, 5pm The exhibition (Im)possible Labor is part of a research cycle on feminism, magic and post-capitalism. Initiated in 2017, WWW³ (WORLD WIDE WEB / WILD WO.MEN WITCHES / WORLD WITHOUT WORK) aims to think collectively about our futures. Through a corpus of installation and performance, as well as socially engaged artistic practices, this research cycle asks the following questions: What links can we weave between magic and post-capitalism? Are we capable of imagining an "exit" from capitalism and putting it into action? How can art, magic and politics be understood in the same way, as creative actions? Evoking both domesticity and laborious work (Im)possible labor is intended as a space of circulation for ideas regarding women’s work — invisible, domestic, care, reproductive labor — post-capitalism, post-work, feminist economics, wages for housework, universal basic income and magic as a creative action. Highlighting the various connections between witchcraft, handicraft, domesticity and politics, the exhibition proposes the inclusion of certain craft techniques, namely weaving and tapestry. Aiming at an appropriation of skills and knowledge endangered by capitalism, this inclusion raises questions relating to the real or imagined opposition of craftwork and labor work, private and public, as well as production and reproduction work. AROUND THE EXHIBITION - Day of reflection 04.13.19 / 1pm - 4:30pm As part of (Im)possible Labor, the artist Marie-Andrée Godin invites you to a day of participative reflection around the issues raised by the exhibition. Drawing on different texts and summoning ideas from feminist economics, post-capitalist theories and witchcraft as a means of action, the artist will propose to think about the work of women and art. In order to promote greater accessibility, the discussion will be conducted in French and English. We will agree on the spot of a mode of operation, according to the ease and capacities of each one. Thank you to register in advance by writing to: [email protected] Lecture / Camille Robert From housework to invisible work: a century of feminist mobilizations 05.18, 2pm - 3pm Since the beginning of the 20th century, several generations of feminists have mobilized to obtain the social, political and economic recognition of domestic work. During the 1980s, this struggle was however discarded from women’s movements and their history. This conference will provide a historical analysis of feminist discourses on domestic work and the debates surrounding its recognition through three avenues: socialization, household wage and government reforms. This retrospective will then briefly discuss some of the contemporary challenges of invisible work. Camille Robert / Biography - Camille Robert is PhD candidate in history at the Université du Québec à Montréal. Her thesis project focuses on conflicts related to reproductive labor work in the context of the neoliberal turn of the Quebec state, through the study of three strikes in the education sector (1982-1983) and health sector (1986, 1989). She is a recipient of a Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarship (2018 - 2021). As part of her master’s thesis, she became interested in the speeches and mobilizations of Quebec feminists for the recognition of housework. Her research was published as a book by Éditions Somme toute in 2017. She has also co-edited a collective work on the invisible work of women in Quebec, published by Éditions du remue-ménage in 2018. |
Views of the exhibition "(Im)possible Labor" by Marie-Andrée Godin, Diagonale, 2019 (Image 1 © Lea Grantham). Image 3: View of Camille Robert's lecture © Emmanuelle Duret.
Victor Yudaev - view of the studio, 2018 - Image: © Victor Yudaev
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LES BAIGNEURS
VICTOR YUDAEV Curator: Néon (Lyon, Fr) 01.18 - 03.16 / Opening 01.17, 5pm Victor Yudaev's work revolves around heteroclite objects and narratives gleaned from his surroundings, feeding from his reality, his imagination and well as his reading of the world. His formal vocabulary is equally varied as it explores the fields of crafts (such as woodcarving, ceramics or sewing), of literature and music, as well as digital animation and cinema. The whole is built in the likes of "novela-objects", as he describes in his own words, where the different pieces become protagonists of diverse episodes: exhibitions or ensemble pieces. They address Victor’s, the fictional artist, relationship to the world, a universe filled with wanderings and memories. Victor currently has four passions: work, walk, swim and sleep. Together, these activities intertwine and weave a guiding string for a plentiful and passionate series of work that explore the multitude set-ups and play of sequences of objects. They play on the idea of assembling and re-assembling like jazz standards that vary depending on the mood, taste and imagination of the musician. Les Baigneurs is both designed as a series of pieces for the exhibition at Diagonale and a mock-up of future costumes for a film in the making. The construction of these works is free to interpretation, reappropriation and commitment creating the possibility of an open scenario. Here, if the title evokes Cezanne's famous paintings, the play of puppets bathing proposed by Victor Yudaev's embarks us on both Jarry's absurd and incongruous January, just as well as transport us into the probable display case of a couture sign, very inspired by the artist's work clothes! The exhibition Les Baigneurs is presented as part of the project Conversations Montreal|Lyon. |
Views of the exhibition "Les Baigneurs" by Victor Yudaev, Diagonale, 2019 © Mike Patten
Michael A. Robinson, The Gift of Oblivion, 2018
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THE GIFT OF OBLIVION
MICHAEL A. ROBINSON 09.8 - 10.13 Opening 09.7,5p.m. ‘’Forgetting, waiting. Waiting that assembles, disperses; forgetting that disperses, assembles. Waiting, forgetting.’’ Maurice Blanchot ‘Awaiting Oblivion’ "The Gift of Oblivion" is an attempt to present images and ideas in the state of their own becoming. For this reason, all of the works in the exhibition are ‘veiled’, in their various ways, both materially and through ideas. More specifically, the exhibition foregrounds creative ‘beginnings’ over ‘endings’, in the hopes of generating moments of anticipation and suspended animation. Self-analytical and reflexive, the installations and images presented are born of an ‘everyday phenomenology’, one that might develop out of any situation or at any moment in time. (Scrolling through Instagram, or shopping at a Dollar Store). Exploring the materiality of light, ‘the image’ as an ‘object’, and the materiality of titles, "The Gift of Oblivion" also examines less frequently pondered aspects of sculptural materiality and their relationships to contemporary installation art. To Michael A. Robinson, there exists nothing more satisfying than the oblivion wherein all things are possible. An oblivion where all objects are equally pregnant with potential and where the difference between choosing or fabricating matters less than giving shape and weight to the medium of experience. This is how oblivion might also be considered a gift. |
Views of the exhibition The Gift of Oblivion, Diagonale, 2018 © Eric Cinq-Mars
JE RELIS TES LIGNES
MARIE-MICHELLE DESCHAMPS, ELEONORE FALSE April 21 - June 9 Opening: April 21, 3pm - REREADING TO THE POINT OF-- There is no telling how it will-- There’s no telling at all. I have lost the plot, the non-(r)enumerated pages shuffled beyond reordering. Glass loses its inherent purpose once it is broken, just like the violent/delicate illusion we collectively harboured, spume smacking the panels and frantically reminding us of our idiocy, the ephemera of it all. The waves weave up, building. Water in its most intricate structure manifests into brute force. It is opaque in its transparency and its motives are too lucid to quite pin down. Heraclitus once said that he was tired, and went for a nap. He never emerged from the undercurrent, the water above changing at the maddening pace of someone preening for attention, shifting, Protean, from one position to the next, trying to catch the eye, any eye, but that one in particular. Stephanie E. Creaghan |
Views of the exhibition Je relis tes lignes, Diagonale, 2018 © Maxime Brouillet
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Marie-Michelle Deschamps would like to thank the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec for the financial support
PERFECT SKIN
GRÉGORY CHATONSKY
& DOMINIQUE SIROIS
01.19 - 03.10
Opening, 01.18, 6pm
With both Boris Groys’ book Going Public and the figure of Kim Kardashian as their starting-points, Grégory Chatonsky and Dominique Sirois explore the evolution of the body and subjectivity in the internet-centred context of the present day. TV-reality star Kardashian claims to have no talent other than her talent for living. However, her publication of countless selfies subsequently “liked” by millions of followers on Instagram fuels a self-referential form of celebrity that exists in a sort of feedback loop. Her orange-tinted skin seems to conform perfectly to the contours of the network, shaping today’s landscape of fame for all as predicted by Andy Warhol. This overly human skin breaks down the closer we get to it, its chinks and flaws becoming more and more apparent, not unlike the façade of a building weathered by the passing of time. This skin, stretched out beneath our gaze, embodies portraiture and ancient statuary in a contemporary way, actualizing the desire to represent and repeat the familiar paradox of inner meaning, “I is an Other”. However, in the realm of current social media, the proliferation of this Otherness has become immeasurable.
With Perfect Skin, Chatonsky and Sirois propose a third instalment of their research on our present’s future perfect tense. During the realization of Telofossils (2013), the transatlantic duo began to wonder what might remain of our civilization in a few thousand years, whereas Des mémoires éteintes (2015) focused on the discovery of Google servers by hypothetical extraterrestrial beings. Perfect Skin pursues this exploration of our era by way of several mediums (photo, video, textiles, ceramics, VR, etc.), honing in on the faces, bodies and skin represented on a now-vertiginous scale through social media. Chatonsky and Sirois have realized their project in a spirit of speculation, as if all these images could be condensed into one diagram of a single collective and desiring body.
GRÉGORY CHATONSKY
& DOMINIQUE SIROIS
01.19 - 03.10
Opening, 01.18, 6pm
With both Boris Groys’ book Going Public and the figure of Kim Kardashian as their starting-points, Grégory Chatonsky and Dominique Sirois explore the evolution of the body and subjectivity in the internet-centred context of the present day. TV-reality star Kardashian claims to have no talent other than her talent for living. However, her publication of countless selfies subsequently “liked” by millions of followers on Instagram fuels a self-referential form of celebrity that exists in a sort of feedback loop. Her orange-tinted skin seems to conform perfectly to the contours of the network, shaping today’s landscape of fame for all as predicted by Andy Warhol. This overly human skin breaks down the closer we get to it, its chinks and flaws becoming more and more apparent, not unlike the façade of a building weathered by the passing of time. This skin, stretched out beneath our gaze, embodies portraiture and ancient statuary in a contemporary way, actualizing the desire to represent and repeat the familiar paradox of inner meaning, “I is an Other”. However, in the realm of current social media, the proliferation of this Otherness has become immeasurable.
With Perfect Skin, Chatonsky and Sirois propose a third instalment of their research on our present’s future perfect tense. During the realization of Telofossils (2013), the transatlantic duo began to wonder what might remain of our civilization in a few thousand years, whereas Des mémoires éteintes (2015) focused on the discovery of Google servers by hypothetical extraterrestrial beings. Perfect Skin pursues this exploration of our era by way of several mediums (photo, video, textiles, ceramics, VR, etc.), honing in on the faces, bodies and skin represented on a now-vertiginous scale through social media. Chatonsky and Sirois have realized their project in a spirit of speculation, as if all these images could be condensed into one diagram of a single collective and desiring body.
Views of the exhibition Perfect skin, Diagonale, 2018 © Dominique Sirois
OUTDOOR EXHIBITION
Jessica Auer, Still Ruins, Moving Stones, 2014
AU LOIN UNE ÎLE
With: Annabelle Arlie, Jessica Auer, Amy Balkin, Cécile Beau, Julien Discrit, Dominic Gagnon, Enrique Ramirez, Capucine Vever, Paul Walde, we S.A.N.K.
Curator: Chloé Grondeau
02.1 - 03.11
Opening 02.1, 6:30pm
Mains d'Oeuvres (Paris)
The exhibition AU LOIN UNE ÎLE proposes a vision of the island as a metaphorical concept of today's geopolitical and sociopolitical issues.
The exhibition is a part of a global project with residencies and exhibitions developped by Diagonale and Mains d'oeuvres.
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DIAGONALE (Montréal) + MAINS D' ŒUVRES (Paris)
2016 - 2018
In the interest of promoting the thriving visual art scenes of their respective cities, and to work collaboratively on a critically engaged, multi-facetted project, Diagonale (Montréal) and Mains d’Œuvres (Paris) are embarking on unique initiative whereby each centre will develop an in situ curatorial proposal within the other centre’s space.
NICOLAS PUYJALON / LE MONDE ENGLOUTI
Performance October 11, 6pm Diagonale will host Nicolas Puyjalon (Berlin) for a performance inspired by the 1962 sci-fi novel ‘Drowned World’, by James G. Ballard. A book where the future is a place of tropical temperatures and accelerated evolution, set in a post-apocalyptic and unrecognisable european Capital. |
Vincent Chevillon, Lisières, with the support of FNAGP, 2014.
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Diagonale + Mains d’œuvres - Part 2
LES GRANDS VOYAGEURS Patrick Beaulieu, Vincent Chevillon, Eric Giraudet de Boudemange, Raphaëlle de Groot, Kapwani Kiwanga, Nadia Myre, Eléonore Saintagnan, Sébastien Rémy et Cyril Verde. Curator: Ann Stouvenel 09.1 - 10.07. 2017 Opening 08.31, 6 pm Everything begins with a journey, from the idea itself to the physical displacement. From oceans crossed to populations encountered, from a simple click on “send” to treading on well-worn paths, globe-trotting artists are full of wonderful tales. These stories recall fortuitous discoveries made on stopovers, here and there, somewhere in our global and post-digital world. Curiosity leads to the collection of information from those who are most willing to share it. The transfer of these stories, from their point of origin to here, is led by these great travellers who navigate the depths that sublimate reality. Artists immerse themselves in these depths. From their chosen raw materials, they collect, cut, assemble, divert, re-appropriate, and create relationships. They have returned with unique beliefs and customs, memories of a history marked by the collateral damage of modernism, the feedback of the journey itself, and moments of reverie. Back home again, distance is re-established and opens the door to other worlds, revealed, questioned, mystified, re-enchanted.The works on view here have been specifically produced or recreated for this exhibition context. Ann Stouvenel / Translation Jo-Anne Balcaen The exhibition Les grands voyageurs is the result of a curatorial residency program initiated by Diagonale, and held in Québec. It is the second installment of a three-part collaborative project launched in 2016 by Diagonale (Montréal) and Mains d’Œuvres (Paris). More details about the Diagonale + Mains d'Oeuvres project here |
Views of the exhibition Les Grands Voyageurs, Diagonale, 2017. De gauche à droite: Éric Giraudet de Boudemange, Three wolves moon, 2017; Patrick Beaulieu, Méandre, 2014-2017; Kapwani Kiwanga, Turns of phases: Fig. 6 (Takdiri), 2015, courtesy: Kapwani Kiwanga and Galerie Tanja Wagner, Berlin. © Paul Litherland
Matériellement rien, potentiellement tout
Guillaume Adjutor Provost
04.28 - 06.10
Opening 04.27, 6pm
This exhibition is a kind of memorial to Nuit Magique, a popular Montreal nightclub that ran from 1976 to 1983. Since few tangible archives of this cult venue still exist, our understanding of it relies on anecdotes from its former owners, and more importantly, on writings from the fringe literary scene. The exhibition project began with the discovery of a book of poems by Spiros Zafiris titled Midnight Magic (1981), where he describes the nightclub as a refuge for poets and signers, among them the legendary Leonard Cohen. Through links made between this book and the poems of Cohen and Henry Moscovitch, it becomes clear that the Nuit Magique scene had an indelible influence on the collective unconscious of the late 1970s. The club’s owner, Bob Di Salvio, was inspired to open a nightclub in the Old Port as a kind of ‘theatre of the real’, and is said to have named it after a lyric in Van Morrison’s song Moondance. In the winter of 1981-82, Cohen co-wrote a libretto with music composed by Lewis Furey. The project had many names: Merry-Go Man, The Hall, and Angel Eyes, before it was finally adapted for the screen in 1985 under the title Night Magic, with Carole Laure in the title role of Judy. The documents that inspired the works on view here offer a somewhat nostalgic view on this period (the post-Olympics Montreal, the disco years, the James Bay project).
Referentiality is at the root of Guillaume Adjutor Provost’s creative process, out of which emerges a kind of conceptual materialism; a conceptual approach that concludes in a very tangible form. This formation of conceptual processes is suggested by the title, ‘Materially nothing, potentially everything,’ a quote by Bob Di Salvio that could be interpreted as a call to abandon our materialist impulses. The exhibition can be seen as one within a series of possible iterations. Suspended concrete globes hang like moons in the gallery. In the centre, a collection of altered smoking pipes rests on a table. The shape of these objects mimics the conjunctio spirituum, a symbolic representation of the union of the masculine and feminine principles in the form of two nude, intertwined angels, which Leonard Cohen borrowed from C. G. Jung’s Psychology and Alchemy (1953), for the cover of his book, Death of a Lady’s Man. When the same artwork was used for the British release of his album, New Skin for the Old Ceremony, the image was censored by adding a fifth angel’s wing to mask the offending parts. The works on paper here are inspired by various lyrical texts by Spiros, Moscovitch, and Cohen, all of which refer to Nuit Magique. The writing is nebulous and serves as a kind of smoke screen where the act of writing prevails over readability. As a whole, the work brings us back to the term ‘scenius”*, as coined by Brian Eno, meaning the culture of a time is defined by the ecology of its creators. To question history also means to blur the distinction between the centre and the periphery, between celebrated and forgotten literature.
* http://www.moredarkthanshark.org/feature_luminous2.html
Matériellement rien, potentiellement tout
Guillaume Adjutor Provost
04.28 - 06.10
Opening 04.27, 6pm
This exhibition is a kind of memorial to Nuit Magique, a popular Montreal nightclub that ran from 1976 to 1983. Since few tangible archives of this cult venue still exist, our understanding of it relies on anecdotes from its former owners, and more importantly, on writings from the fringe literary scene. The exhibition project began with the discovery of a book of poems by Spiros Zafiris titled Midnight Magic (1981), where he describes the nightclub as a refuge for poets and signers, among them the legendary Leonard Cohen. Through links made between this book and the poems of Cohen and Henry Moscovitch, it becomes clear that the Nuit Magique scene had an indelible influence on the collective unconscious of the late 1970s. The club’s owner, Bob Di Salvio, was inspired to open a nightclub in the Old Port as a kind of ‘theatre of the real’, and is said to have named it after a lyric in Van Morrison’s song Moondance. In the winter of 1981-82, Cohen co-wrote a libretto with music composed by Lewis Furey. The project had many names: Merry-Go Man, The Hall, and Angel Eyes, before it was finally adapted for the screen in 1985 under the title Night Magic, with Carole Laure in the title role of Judy. The documents that inspired the works on view here offer a somewhat nostalgic view on this period (the post-Olympics Montreal, the disco years, the James Bay project).
Referentiality is at the root of Guillaume Adjutor Provost’s creative process, out of which emerges a kind of conceptual materialism; a conceptual approach that concludes in a very tangible form. This formation of conceptual processes is suggested by the title, ‘Materially nothing, potentially everything,’ a quote by Bob Di Salvio that could be interpreted as a call to abandon our materialist impulses. The exhibition can be seen as one within a series of possible iterations. Suspended concrete globes hang like moons in the gallery. In the centre, a collection of altered smoking pipes rests on a table. The shape of these objects mimics the conjunctio spirituum, a symbolic representation of the union of the masculine and feminine principles in the form of two nude, intertwined angels, which Leonard Cohen borrowed from C. G. Jung’s Psychology and Alchemy (1953), for the cover of his book, Death of a Lady’s Man. When the same artwork was used for the British release of his album, New Skin for the Old Ceremony, the image was censored by adding a fifth angel’s wing to mask the offending parts. The works on paper here are inspired by various lyrical texts by Spiros, Moscovitch, and Cohen, all of which refer to Nuit Magique. The writing is nebulous and serves as a kind of smoke screen where the act of writing prevails over readability. As a whole, the work brings us back to the term ‘scenius”*, as coined by Brian Eno, meaning the culture of a time is defined by the ecology of its creators. To question history also means to blur the distinction between the centre and the periphery, between celebrated and forgotten literature.
* http://www.moredarkthanshark.org/feature_luminous2.html
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ACTIVITIES AROUND THE EXHIBITION
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Family workshop
05.20 - 1:30 - 3pm
Inspired by "Matériellement rien, potentiellement tout", the current exhibition at Diagonale, this family workshop will be an opportunity to explore the playful formal vocabulary of the artist. Participants will be asked to create a little magical moth.
The workshop will be led by a mediator. It will be preceded by a guided visit of the exhibition.
Activity for all ages, from the age of 5 years
Free
RSVP: administration@artdiagonale.org
05.20 - 1:30 - 3pm
Inspired by "Matériellement rien, potentiellement tout", the current exhibition at Diagonale, this family workshop will be an opportunity to explore the playful formal vocabulary of the artist. Participants will be asked to create a little magical moth.
The workshop will be led by a mediator. It will be preceded by a guided visit of the exhibition.
Activity for all ages, from the age of 5 years
Free
RSVP: administration@artdiagonale.org
Views of the exhibition Matériellement rien, potentiellement tout by Guillaume Adjutor Provost, Diagonale © Guy L'Heureux
THE IMPOSSIBLE BLUE ROSE
LISA LIPTON
01.20 - 04.1
Opening 01.19, 18h
Letting go or giving up isn’t an act of cowardice; quite often it’s an act of supreme bravery.
- Lisa Lipton
Halifax-based artist Lisa Lipton brings together the nine chapters of her multi-disciplinary project and experimental feature film THE IMPOSSIBLE BLUE ROSE. Almost four years in the making, Lipton’s project is the culmination of video, theatre, dance, poetry, sculpture, and more that surfaced on her dreamy and rebellious journey throughout North America. Lipton’s story follows its own path, one of spontaneity and intuition, yet with recurring characters, objects, and symbols. It began with Room 95, a film documenting her trip across North America to Los Angeles meeting drummers along the way, swapping tales, and finding a shared rhythm in the conflation of personal/private spaces with the public stage. Since then she has gathered stories from around the continent, among them dance parties in Vancouver, looking for her own grave in Death Valley, and in the end, searching for paradise in Oahu. With each episode, Lipton’s narrative grows rhizomatically, accumulating signifiers like souvenirs that she invests with meaning, recurring like an echo but repurposed in multiple forms. Thus, the tropical palm tree, that superlative symbol of paradise and longing, first introduced in the fabric of the California party shorts worn in Room 95, resurfaces often, including as a glittery prop in HARANA (Chapter Four). Nostalgic pop references from the 80s and 90s are found throughout, such as Dawson’s Creek’s Joey Potter, Axel Rose, or her appropriation of John Cusack from the iconic movie Say Anything.
THE IMPOSSIBLE BLUE ROSE is as much a metaphysical quest for the self as an interdisciplinary “docu-fiction.” For all the loaded references, the circuitous narratives, the gender switching, and general ambiguity, there is a strong sense of letting go – of a lingering past, of an anticipated future, of hang ups and conventions, of high school crushes, and of teenage angst - and in doing so, a connection is made. It is in this exchange, be it between the artist and audience, the actors, the musicians, and even between the various and multifaceted forms of her practice itself, that Lipton’s journey truly takes place.
Ryan Doherty
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ACTIVITIES AROUND THE EXHIBITION
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ACTIVITIES AROUND THE EXHIBITION
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NUIT BLANCHE
DIAGONALE + FNC 03.4, 9pm - 12am During the Nuit Blanche, Diagonale proposes a night opening and invites, in partnership with the Festival du nouveau cinéma, the dj Lynn T for a 3 hours dj set in the context of the incredible world of THE IMPOSSIBLE BLUE ROSE, the exhibition currently being presented at Diagonale. The djset will be preceded by a performance and the screening of short films at Dazibao. More details about the evening programming here. |
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Lynne T (aka LT Entertainment)
Lynne T has been listening to and collecting records since she was a teenager growing up on the south shore of Montreal. Sound recordist by day and DJ by night she is also a founding member of queer feminist electro group Lesbians On Ecstasy. Her love for music and dancing always come through in her eclectic DJ sets. Vive la danse libre!
Festival du Nouveau Cinéma
A major event on the Canadian cinema scene since its first edition in 1971, the Festival du nouveau cinéma in Montreal has proven its ability to continually adapt to the most avant-garde audiovisual practices in the field. During eleven days of festival : over 350 films (feature and short films) by directors from Québec, Canada and all over the World, virtual reality installations, performances, digital and interactiv experiences, cocktails, parties, conferences, and encounters are offered to the audiences. Don’t miss the Festival’s 46th edition next Fall, October 4 to 15, 2017!
www.nouveaucinema.ca
Lynne T (aka LT Entertainment)
Lynne T has been listening to and collecting records since she was a teenager growing up on the south shore of Montreal. Sound recordist by day and DJ by night she is also a founding member of queer feminist electro group Lesbians On Ecstasy. Her love for music and dancing always come through in her eclectic DJ sets. Vive la danse libre!
Festival du Nouveau Cinéma
A major event on the Canadian cinema scene since its first edition in 1971, the Festival du nouveau cinéma in Montreal has proven its ability to continually adapt to the most avant-garde audiovisual practices in the field. During eleven days of festival : over 350 films (feature and short films) by directors from Québec, Canada and all over the World, virtual reality installations, performances, digital and interactiv experiences, cocktails, parties, conferences, and encounters are offered to the audiences. Don’t miss the Festival’s 46th edition next Fall, October 4 to 15, 2017!
www.nouveaucinema.ca
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GUIDED TOUR
THE IMPOSSIBLE BLUE ROSE - LISA LIPTON
02.4
3pm
Free entrance - everybody is welcome
Diagonale is glad to invited you to a guided visit of the current exhibition THE IMPOSSIBLE BLUE ROSE by Lisa Lipton.
The guided visit will be offered in French
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GUIDED TOUR
THE IMPOSSIBLE BLUE ROSE - LISA LIPTON
02.4
3pm
Free entrance - everybody is welcome
Diagonale is glad to invited you to a guided visit of the current exhibition THE IMPOSSIBLE BLUE ROSE by Lisa Lipton.
The guided visit will be offered in French
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VISITING ARTIST LECTURE - LISA LIPTON
01.17 - 12:40pm Concordia University An echo of THE IMPOSSIBLE BLUE ROSE exhibition by Lisa Lipton presented at Diagonale , Concordia welcome the Halifax-based artist for a lecture. Hosted by Fibres & Material Practices // Department of Studio Arts, Concordia University Practical informations ______________________ Concordia University 7141 Sherbrooke Ouest Montréal (514) 848-2424 |
Views of the exhibition THE IMPOSSIBLE BLUE ROSE by Lisa Lipton, 2017 © Guy L'Heureux
HEAVY ON ULTRAMARINE
ELISE WINDSOR
11.10 - 12.7
Opening, 11.10, 6pm
(windows)
The practice of Elise Windsor explores the materiality of photography, calling attention to photographs as objects. She makes large-scale installations that are loud and bright, incorporating photographs, found objects, and constructed elements. In these elaborate environments, photographs are presented as simply one of many elements, allowing the viewer to engage with them on a different level. She pushes the photograph as a material thing, by using tropes of photography, mainly the still life. Her research is executed in the form of photographs combined with large-scale installations where images are fluid and have no fixed spot. Elise Windsor call attention to this objecthood by displaying the photographs not just on the wall, but instead placed non-hierarchically throughout her installations. She calls attention to the viewing experience, demanding more than a second of the viewers’ attention, making viewers conscious of the act of looking.
HEAVY ON ULTRAMARINE is roughly 5.5ft tall by 23ft wide. The mural includes references to both photographic and painting histories through the use of form, colour, shape, scale, and dimensions. The use of these objects, spaces, gestures and repetition (both in the mural and from her own past photos) come to life through documentation in her studio. She adds and removes objects for the camera to create a new, flat, dimension.
BUY ART
10.11 - 3.12
OPENING 10.11, 6PM
DJ SET GLEN BRANCH & NO PRESSURE 7PM/11PM
Located in the heart of Montréal’s nerve centre for visual and media arts presentation, Diagonale is directly connected as a key player on the Montréal scene. Dedicated to exhibiting contemporary art as it relates to the medium of fibres, the centre presents five exhibitions annually, as well as conferences and a publishing program, through special partnerships with analogous organizations throughout Canada and abroad. This annual fundraising event allows Diagonale, a non-profit organization, to carry out its development projects and its support to emerging and established artists and curators. In this context, more than twenty artists wished to contribute to the centre’s development by donating part of the proceeds from the sale of their work.
See the works
Views of the fundraising-exhibition Buy art, 2016 © Diagonale
View of La Soupée #4. Guillaume Adjutor Provots talk about his project © Diagonale
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La Soupée
10.22 - 10.29 October 22 at 7 p.m. , Diagonale presented La Soupée, a micro-sponsorship project conceived as a direct fundraising and mediation tool where diners (participants) are invited to choose a project among three artistic proposals presented at the beginning of the dinner event. A simple formula: 1 meal + 30 participants + 3 artists = 1 micro-funded project. A dinner event open to 30 guests for a $50 fee distributed the cost of the meal, and the co-production of an art project. During this event, selected artists Guillaume Adjutor Provost, Sarah Nance and Dominique Sirois presented their project to the dinner guests who voted for the project they wanted to support and see co-produced. All profits from the event were donated to the project that received majority support, making each participant a micro-patron. In addition to funding a new art project, La Soupée have offered a convivial context in which to share ideas and meet people. It was also an opportunity to support worthy initiatives, a time to talk about art and a space to network with peers. The projects, as they were proposed at the Soupée, are presented in the Diagonal’s gallery until October 29. More details about the event: here |
Views of La Soupée #4 © Diagonale
We Make Carpets, Bend and stretch © We Make Carpets
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[Residency / Exhibition]
BEND AND STRETCH WE MAKE CARPETS Exhibition 09.9 - 10.15 We Make Carpets is a three person collective from the Netherlands consisting of visual artist Bob Waardenburg and designers Stijn van der Vleuten and Marcia Nolte. Since 2009 they have been making art installations out of everyday materials. The work of We Make Carpets is a constant investigation in the products produced by our industrialised society. By gathering these products and research their aesthetic values these products that everybody knows become artistic building blocks in the hands of We Make Carpets. The, often large scale, site specific art installations of We Make Carpets include these products in such quantities that the individual product disappears in the mass and becomes part of an elaborate pattern exploring new shapes and color combinations. This makes the work of We Make Carpets not only an exploration through the mass produced contents of our modern day society, but also a constant growing library of these products and the patterns created with these products. The temporary character of the We Make Carpets works emphasise the character of the products that are used, for most of them were made only the be used for a short amount of time. After the exhibition, the only prove of the works being made are the photographs on the website. Especially for Diagonale We Make Carpets fills the exhibition space with new works using office materials like paperclips and rubber bands. This exhibition is the result of a residency at Diagonale and received financial support from the Dutch Creative Fund |
Views of the exhibition Bend and stretch by We Make Carpets, show at Diagonale from 09.8 to 2016.10.15 © Guy L'Heureux
OUTDOOR
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Kim Waldron, Jurist, 2003, Series Working Assumption, C–Print
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[Residency / Exhibition]
DRESS CODES Exhibition 09.1 - 10.9 Art space: Mains d'Œuvres (Paris, Fr) Curator: Alexandrine Dhainaut With: Kim Waldron, Sorel Cohen, Myriam Jacob-Allard, Nadège Grebmeier Forget, Dayna McLeod, Justine Pluvinage, Johanna Benaïnous & Elsa Parra. On each side of the Atlantic Ocean, we wonder on what clichés rest upon, how do the norms and the codes of representations of one sex or another construct themselves ? How do the roles, male and female, divide up and why ? As to demonstrate its arbitrary dimension, we set ourselves into motion, we place ourselves in front of the (video) camera and we put on a disguise. We parody, we distort a gesture, an accessory, we strike a pose, we perform the clichés again to underline their limits, to highlight the conventions which shape and condition us. Nourished with the perspective of women artists from Montreal, especially met for the occasion, and of other women artists, the works put together will be tools for thought, through art, on the dominant role-models, the stereotypes and the possible gap in all this. Because : if the suit makes the man banker, what about the woman banker ? This exhibition is the result of a curator residency at Diagonale and is part of residencies/exhibitions program develop by Diagonale (Montreal) and Mains d'Œuvres (Paris). More details about the overall project here ______________________ Mains d'Œuvres 1, rue Charles Garnier 93400 Saint-Ouen France |
Views of the exhibition Dress codes, a Diagonale and Mains d'Oeuvres project, show at Mains d'Oeuvres from 09.1 to 2016.10.10 © Alexandrine Dhainaut / Manon Giacone
ADC/DAC
PHILLIP DAVID STEARNS (NY, USA)
Curators: Nathalie Bachand and Chloé Grondeau
05.06 - 06.11
A partnership with the International Digital Art Biennial (BIAN)
Drawing his materials from the heart of digital abstraction, Phillip David Stearns uses technology and electronic media to explore the dynamic relationships between ideas and materials that are mobilized within our complex and interconnected societies. At Diagonale, the New York artist will present ADC/DAC, an exhibition that unites 3 distinct works that allow viewers to experience the multiplicity of his object- and digital-based vocabulary.
"Vestigial Data" is an installation featuring three tapestries – realised on a Jacquard loom – each one representing a set of lost data, remaining hidden deep in a computer after a crash. Through development algorithm processes, these “phantoms of the machine” reveal astonishing structures and patterns. With this project, Stearns is pursuing his exploration of textiles as tactile and visual media, enabling the transmission and storage of data. On a different note, the video installation "A Consequence of Infinitely Discursive Vision Technologies" is a reflection on the contemporary interpretation of the idea of landscape. Composed of neon lights and scanned images of glaciers, this luminescent presentation revisits ideas of scale, location and spatiality. Finally, "Smooth and/or Striated" looks at the illusory nature of indetermination, or an in-between state. The Deleuzian work – which looks at the French philosopher’s notions of smooth and striated spaces – highlights the binary quality of this interstice connecting two extremes, the granular variation of which moves the visual territory between homogeneity and heterogeneity.
PHILLIP DAVID STEARNS (NY, USA)
Curators: Nathalie Bachand and Chloé Grondeau
05.06 - 06.11
A partnership with the International Digital Art Biennial (BIAN)
Drawing his materials from the heart of digital abstraction, Phillip David Stearns uses technology and electronic media to explore the dynamic relationships between ideas and materials that are mobilized within our complex and interconnected societies. At Diagonale, the New York artist will present ADC/DAC, an exhibition that unites 3 distinct works that allow viewers to experience the multiplicity of his object- and digital-based vocabulary.
"Vestigial Data" is an installation featuring three tapestries – realised on a Jacquard loom – each one representing a set of lost data, remaining hidden deep in a computer after a crash. Through development algorithm processes, these “phantoms of the machine” reveal astonishing structures and patterns. With this project, Stearns is pursuing his exploration of textiles as tactile and visual media, enabling the transmission and storage of data. On a different note, the video installation "A Consequence of Infinitely Discursive Vision Technologies" is a reflection on the contemporary interpretation of the idea of landscape. Composed of neon lights and scanned images of glaciers, this luminescent presentation revisits ideas of scale, location and spatiality. Finally, "Smooth and/or Striated" looks at the illusory nature of indetermination, or an in-between state. The Deleuzian work – which looks at the French philosopher’s notions of smooth and striated spaces – highlights the binary quality of this interstice connecting two extremes, the granular variation of which moves the visual territory between homogeneity and heterogeneity.
Views of the exhibition ADC/DAC by Phillip David Stearns © Guy L'Heureux
CONTEXTUAL FURNISHINGS
TIM MESSEILLER
03.11 - 04.23.16
Opening 03.10, 6 pm
+ concerts Everett Bird (Oh No Yoko), rock prog and Meat Bryan Adams, dad rock
Tim Messeiller’s art practice looks at how critical discourse shifts within different contexts. Through references to art history and design, he re-evaluates the normative logic of certain questions around contemporary art’s system of codification, and further disrupts the presentation protocols of art/objects created through artisanal techniques.
Contextual furnishings brings together a series of new works arranged within a model-home structure, as symbol of a “typical” or normative way of being/doing. It contains familiar objects, such as tables, chairs and shelves that are inserted within a display context and rendered deliberately unusable. Each object is handcrafted out of wood, cloth or rope, and reflects Messeiller’s DIY/craft aesthetic and the porous relationship between artist and artisan. Extracted from their original domestic context, their full potential as objects is revealed. As potentially usable, they invite the viewer to recognize their unconscious behaviour when faced with an unusual situation. Evoking multiple references, such as Robert Smithson’s Non-Sites, Koki Tanaka’s rearrangement of the ordinary in art, Marcel Broodthaers’ concept of artistic authenticity, and the Foucauldian principle of reactivation, Tim Messeiller raises the question of the perception/reception of an art work and the possible interaction between public and object. He examines to what degree free initiative is allowed on the part of the viewer, revealing the sense of imprisonment caused by a codified art milieu, and how a presentation space can be reconsidered as a zone of memorial activation, freed from any artistic or social reproduction.
Chloé Grondeau / Translation by Jo-Anne Balcaen
TIM MESSEILLER
03.11 - 04.23.16
Opening 03.10, 6 pm
+ concerts Everett Bird (Oh No Yoko), rock prog and Meat Bryan Adams, dad rock
Tim Messeiller’s art practice looks at how critical discourse shifts within different contexts. Through references to art history and design, he re-evaluates the normative logic of certain questions around contemporary art’s system of codification, and further disrupts the presentation protocols of art/objects created through artisanal techniques.
Contextual furnishings brings together a series of new works arranged within a model-home structure, as symbol of a “typical” or normative way of being/doing. It contains familiar objects, such as tables, chairs and shelves that are inserted within a display context and rendered deliberately unusable. Each object is handcrafted out of wood, cloth or rope, and reflects Messeiller’s DIY/craft aesthetic and the porous relationship between artist and artisan. Extracted from their original domestic context, their full potential as objects is revealed. As potentially usable, they invite the viewer to recognize their unconscious behaviour when faced with an unusual situation. Evoking multiple references, such as Robert Smithson’s Non-Sites, Koki Tanaka’s rearrangement of the ordinary in art, Marcel Broodthaers’ concept of artistic authenticity, and the Foucauldian principle of reactivation, Tim Messeiller raises the question of the perception/reception of an art work and the possible interaction between public and object. He examines to what degree free initiative is allowed on the part of the viewer, revealing the sense of imprisonment caused by a codified art milieu, and how a presentation space can be reconsidered as a zone of memorial activation, freed from any artistic or social reproduction.
Chloé Grondeau / Translation by Jo-Anne Balcaen
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This exhibition receives the support of the Canada Council for the Arts.
Diagonale receives financial support from the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec, the Conseil des arts de Montréal and the Ministère de la Culture et des Communications.
un mobilier contextuel from tim messeiller on Vimeo.
Activities around the exhibition Contextual furnishings
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LE JUSTE PRIX / THE PRICE IS RIGHT
Performance/Finissage 04.23, 6 - 8 pm In the context of the finissage of the exhibition Contextual furnishings by Tim Messeiller, come to test your art market knowledge during the Price Is Right and run the chance to come back home with an artwork by Tim Messeiller, just by guessing its price! The price of the artworks are based on Steve Giasson's performance "keep your minds for yourself " in diagonale. The price is right is here as much a reference to the famous TV game as a critique of the art market. The artworks become then democratized, banalized and related to their initial object status for the spectator's amusement and entertainment. Change your destiny by tastefully decorating your chimney with free artworks! |
© Tim Messeiller
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POUF-MOUFFLE
Family workshop 04.23 - 1:30 - 3pm Inspired by A contextual furnishings by Tim Messeiller, the current exhibition at Diagonale, this family workshop will be an opportunity to explore the playful formal vocabulary of the artist. Participants will be asked to create a little sculpture wearing a glove with paint, fimo and textile. The workshop will be led by Tim Messeiller and a mediator. It will be preceded by a guided visit of the exhibition. Activity for all ages, from the age of 5 years Free For more information: [email protected] |
Views of the exhibition Contextual furnishings © Guy L'Heureux
AU FIL DE L'HISTOIRE
MICHAEL BLUM, LEAH DECTER & JAIMIE ISAAC, KEESIC DOUGLAS
Guest curator: Anne-Marie St-Jean Aubre
01.15 - 02.20.2016
Opening 01.14, 6 pm
MICHAEL BLUM, LEAH DECTER & JAIMIE ISAAC, KEESIC DOUGLAS
Guest curator: Anne-Marie St-Jean Aubre
01.15 - 02.20.2016
Opening 01.14, 6 pm
"Is the era of high seas, in which companies operate beyond the sovereign grasp of nation-states as laws unto themselves, even actually behind us?"
(A Company with Sovereignty and Subjects of Its Own? The Case of the Hudson's Bay Company, 1670–1763, Edward Cavanagh)
Colonialism and capitalism meet in this project, providing us with an opportunity to reflect on Canadian history. Exemplifying the thread that runs throughout the exhibition, Keesic Douglas’ work titled Trade Me (2010), describes a journey by canoe carried out by the artist, replete with various incidents and portages, as he retraces the voyage from the Chippewas of Rama First Nation to the Hudson’s Bay store in Toronto, in an attempt to return the famous striped blanket given to his great-great-grandfather in exchange for animal hides and furs. Through similar strategies – documentation of a long journey along a trade route and an interest in field surveys – Michael Blum and Keesic Douglas present a history that deals with the production and circulation of consumer goods: a pair of Nike shoes, a Hudson’s Bay blanket. For her part, Leah Decter contextualizes the Hudson’s Bay blanket within the history of Canadian colonialism by creating links between the past and the present, referring both to its exchange value during the fur trade, and to former Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s controversial statement in 2009 that Canada has ‘no history of Colonialism’.
As one of the world’s longest-standing corporations still active today, the Hudson’s Bay company, founded in 1670 by proclamation of the English royal charter as The Governor and Company of Adventurers of England trading into Hudson’s Bay, acted as a colonizing force of development in Rupert’s Land. Sovereign on the territory that was to become Canada, the company’s activities were less aimed at civilizing the indigenous population, and more toward creating economic development in favour of its home country, and eventually opening new markets.
Throughout history, the Hudson’s Bay has witnessed the building of Canada and the transformation of an economy that is closely tied to political concerns. As historian Edward Cavanagh points out, the colonization of a territory was first organized through the actions of a corporation, a foundation that incites us to observe the practices of today’s multinationals in a differently light. By going back to the source, these artists reverse the colonial process, inverting it to some extent in order to criticize it. Together, these works place the development of capitalism in perspective and question the links between this history and the history of colonial enterprise.
Anne-Marie St-Jean Aubre / Translation: Jo-Anne Balcaen
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An invitation from Chloé Grondeau for Diagonale
This exhibition receives the support of the Canada Council for the Arts. Diagonale receives financial support from the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec, the Conseil des arts de Montréal and the Ministère de la Culture et des Communications.
(A Company with Sovereignty and Subjects of Its Own? The Case of the Hudson's Bay Company, 1670–1763, Edward Cavanagh)
Colonialism and capitalism meet in this project, providing us with an opportunity to reflect on Canadian history. Exemplifying the thread that runs throughout the exhibition, Keesic Douglas’ work titled Trade Me (2010), describes a journey by canoe carried out by the artist, replete with various incidents and portages, as he retraces the voyage from the Chippewas of Rama First Nation to the Hudson’s Bay store in Toronto, in an attempt to return the famous striped blanket given to his great-great-grandfather in exchange for animal hides and furs. Through similar strategies – documentation of a long journey along a trade route and an interest in field surveys – Michael Blum and Keesic Douglas present a history that deals with the production and circulation of consumer goods: a pair of Nike shoes, a Hudson’s Bay blanket. For her part, Leah Decter contextualizes the Hudson’s Bay blanket within the history of Canadian colonialism by creating links between the past and the present, referring both to its exchange value during the fur trade, and to former Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s controversial statement in 2009 that Canada has ‘no history of Colonialism’.
As one of the world’s longest-standing corporations still active today, the Hudson’s Bay company, founded in 1670 by proclamation of the English royal charter as The Governor and Company of Adventurers of England trading into Hudson’s Bay, acted as a colonizing force of development in Rupert’s Land. Sovereign on the territory that was to become Canada, the company’s activities were less aimed at civilizing the indigenous population, and more toward creating economic development in favour of its home country, and eventually opening new markets.
Throughout history, the Hudson’s Bay has witnessed the building of Canada and the transformation of an economy that is closely tied to political concerns. As historian Edward Cavanagh points out, the colonization of a territory was first organized through the actions of a corporation, a foundation that incites us to observe the practices of today’s multinationals in a differently light. By going back to the source, these artists reverse the colonial process, inverting it to some extent in order to criticize it. Together, these works place the development of capitalism in perspective and question the links between this history and the history of colonial enterprise.
Anne-Marie St-Jean Aubre / Translation: Jo-Anne Balcaen
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An invitation from Chloé Grondeau for Diagonale
This exhibition receives the support of the Canada Council for the Arts. Diagonale receives financial support from the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec, the Conseil des arts de Montréal and the Ministère de la Culture et des Communications.
Activities around the exhibition Au fil de l'histoire
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(official denial) trade value in progress
--------- Activated collaboratively, official denial is an ongoing dialogic project initiated by Leah Decter and curated by Jaimie Isaac. Final Sewing Action January 30, 2 - 5 pm In June of 2008, Prime Minister Stephen Harper issued an official “Statement of Apology to former students of Indian Residential Schools.” In September of 2009 at the G20 Summit he stated publicly in reference to Canada that, “we also have no history of Colonialism”. In June of 2010 official denial was launched at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s (TRC) first event and since then has traveled independently across the nation. The project provides a platform for dialogue and critical exchange inviting Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples to write and sew their responses to this statement of national denial. The ‘Harper Government’ was defeated in October 2015, and the new Liberal Government has stated its commitment to the implementation of the TRC’s Call to Actions. Whether or not these good intentions do result in concrete change, decolonizing Indigenous/non-Indigenous relations must remain a priority. With this in mind, (official denial) trade value in progress is holding a final sewing action. At this time we invite participants to comment on the gravity of Harper’s G20 statement, the five years of statements contributed to the project from across the country, and the ways forward. ----- For more information about this project go to the project website: http://www.leahdecter.com/official_denial/home.html |
PUBLIC SCREENING + TALK
--------- February 18, 6 pm Screening: Seating capacity of 30. first come, first serve basis! Not limited places for talk. Public talk and screening of the documentary film "The Other Side of the Ledger: An Indian View of the Hudson's Bay Company" by Martin Defalco and Willie Dunn. As part of the exhibition Au fil de l’histoire, which explores the Hudson’s Bay Company’s role within Canadian history and its relationship to the country’s Aboriginal communities, among other themes, we will present the 1972 documentary, The Other Side of the Ledger: An Indian View of the Hudson’s Bay Company (in English). Directed by Martin Defalco and Willie Dunn on the occasion of the corporation’s 300th anniversary, this NFB film juxtaposes two versions of a shared history, favouring the point of view of Aboriginal and Métis people who were marginalized during these celebrations. Keesic Douglas, an Ojibway artist from Rama, Ontario, whose work Trade Me is presented in the exhibition, will also speak of his relationship to the Hudson’s Bay Company’s iconic point blanket, and more broadly of his artistic practice as it relates to fashion, fur, frontiers, film, and omission. His presentation will be followed by a discussion between the artist, the public, and the curator on the concept behind the exhibition and its related issues. The screening will take place in Dazibao's projection room, graciously made available to us for this event. --------- Keesic Douglas is an Ojibway artist from the Rama First Nation in central Ontario, Canada. His practice utilizes photography, video and performance focusing on themes of exploring history, identity, representation, and the environment through an Indigenous perspective. His work has been exhibited both across Canada and internationally. His work has been shown in solo exhibitions in Winnipeg, Toronto and recently the Orillia Museum of Art & History as well as group exhibitions in Budapest, Prague, Mexico, Vancouver, Montreal and New York City. In 2009 his video War Pony screened at the Berlin International Film Festival in Germany. His short film The Vanishing Trace won best short documentary at the imagineNATIVE Film Festival in 2007. In the summer of 2014, his work was exhibited as part of Before and After the Horizon: Anishnabek Artists of the Great Lakes at the Art Gallery of Ontario. Keesic graduated with a BFA from OCAD in 2008 where he won the medal for photography and completed his MFA at UBC in Vancouver BC in 2010. |
Views of the exhibition Au fil de L'histoire © Guy L'Heureux
HAS ART BECOME IRRELEVANT?
STEVE GIASSON Curator : Chloé Grondeau (Windows) Exhibition from november 20, 2015 to january, 2016 Opening on november 19, 6 pm Conceptual artist Steve Giasson uses a variety of mediums to question art and its subjects. For Diagonale’s new window project, the artist presents L’art est-il devenu sans importance? (Has art become irrelevant?), an installation that unfolds on the edge of the ineffable. Playing on the notion of doubt, the artist manipulates art’s codified systems through casually placed familiar objects and common, everyday accessories, which he blatantly displays to passersby, oblivious that they’ve become an art viewing public. Steve Giasson presents a discrete epigraph to a recent issue raised by Michael J. Lewis on the relevance of discourse on contemporary art. Has art merely become an amusement park filled with soulless ‘attractions’ that favour spectacular experiences over a process anchored in the real socio-political issues of the world? In his installation, the artist has imagined an |
interconnected system of cinematic, artistic, and literary references, all of which extend and transform into sculptural objects: a Baudelairian figure incarnated as an artificial plant under the influence of GHB; a knock-off luxury-brand T-shirt reconfigured as the by-product of a disillusioned celebrity’s career; Kraft Dinner as an artefact of the film Last Days by Gus Van Sant – itself a reference to the final days of Kurt Cobain’s life leading up to his suicide. Steve Giasson seeks to create parallels between the conceivably ostentatious worlds of gossip magazines and creative practice, comparing art’s dubious posturing to the debaucherous world of celebrity. No surprise then, to be reminded of the many images of a leisurely-strolling Jared Leto sporting a conspicuous ENFANTS RICHES DÉPRIMÉS t-shirt. At one end of the spectrum, a bowl of noodles, at the other, a feature article questioning art’s propensity to tell the world’s tales.
Chloé Grondeau/Translation Jo-Anne Balcaen
Chloé Grondeau/Translation Jo-Anne Balcaen
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1. Michael J. Lewis, Has art become irrelevant?, e-flux, http://conversations.e-flux.com/t/has-art-become-irrelevant/2269
2. Steve Giasson will present a copy of the shirt worn by the American actor
3. Inscription on a t-shirt from the eponymous Franco-American fashion label
Steve Giasson, To Drug an Artificial Plant, vidéo, 41s, 2015
Views of the exhibition L'art est-il devenu sans importance? © Guy L'Heureux
BUY ART
Fundraising-exhibition
25 artists, 32 works
(Gallery)
Exhibition from november 20 to décember, 2015
Opening on november 19, 6 pm
Located in the heart of Montréal’s nerve centre for visual and media arts presentation, Diagonale is directly connected as a key player on the Montréal scene. Dedicated to exhibiting contemporary art as it relates to the medium of fibres, the centre presents five exhibitions annually, as well as conferences and a publishing program, through special partnerships with analogous organizations throughout Canada and abroad. This annual fundraising event allows Diagonale, a non-profit organization, to carry out its development projects and its support to emerging and established artists and curators. In this context, more than twenty artists wished to contribute to the centre’s development by donating part of the proceeds from the sale of their work.
32 works are on sale in the context of Buy art.
Fundraising-exhibition
25 artists, 32 works
(Gallery)
Exhibition from november 20 to décember, 2015
Opening on november 19, 6 pm
Located in the heart of Montréal’s nerve centre for visual and media arts presentation, Diagonale is directly connected as a key player on the Montréal scene. Dedicated to exhibiting contemporary art as it relates to the medium of fibres, the centre presents five exhibitions annually, as well as conferences and a publishing program, through special partnerships with analogous organizations throughout Canada and abroad. This annual fundraising event allows Diagonale, a non-profit organization, to carry out its development projects and its support to emerging and established artists and curators. In this context, more than twenty artists wished to contribute to the centre’s development by donating part of the proceeds from the sale of their work.
32 works are on sale in the context of Buy art.
Views of the exhibition Achète de l'art © Guy L'Heureux
EX SITU LAUNCH
SPECIAL ISSUE, VENICE BIENNALE November 27, 6 pm-8pm Because Diagonale wants to support the new generation and the critical discourse in contemporary art, the artist-run center welcomes the launch of Ex situ, the art magazine created and published by the students in art history of UQAM. + Artistic performance and DJ + Gifts and free drink for first visitors + Buffet .... More detail about the magazine: https://revueexsituuqam.wordpress.com/ |
La Soupée, the exhibition
October 27 to 31 October 24 at 7 p.m. , Diagonale presented La Soupée, a micro-sponsorship project conceived as a direct fundraising and mediation tool where diners (participants) are invited to choose a project among three artistic proposals presented at the beginning of the dinner event. A simple formula: 1 meal + 30 participants + 3 artists = 1 micro-funded project. A dinner event open to 30 guests for a $50 fee distributed the cost of the meal, and the co-production of an art project. During this event, selected artists Alexis Bellavance, Michelle Furlong and Steve Giasson presented their project to the dinner guests who voted for the project they wanted to support and see co-produced. All profits from the event ($900) were donated to the project by Alexis Bellavance, that received majority support, making each participant a micro-patron. In addition to funding a new art project, La Soupée have offered a convivial context in which to share ideas and meet people. It was also an opportunity to support worthy initiatives, a time to talk about art and a space to network with peers. The projects, as they were proposed at the Soupée, are presented in the Diagonal’s gallery until October 31. More details about the event: here |
I NEVER PLAY BASKETBALL NOW
EVA TAULOIS
EXHIBITION FROM SEPTEMBER 15 TO OCTOBER 17, 2015
OPENING RECEPTION ON SEPTEMBER 12, 6 PM
I NEVER PLAY BASKETBALL NOW by Eva Taulois, is a new solo exhibition of work resulting from her artist residency at Diagonale this summer. At the heart of the French artist’s presentation is her familiar arsenal of materials, displayed alongside the free experimentations her extended installation period has allowed.
Operating through analogy, Eva Taulois favours the use of familiar objects, re-adapting their forms until their original nature is confused. These referent forms, now disembodied from their original meaning, come to exist within a visual language steeped in abstraction. In her work, Eva Taulois analyzes various contexts from which she creates minimalist and often-colourful sculptures composed primarily of textiles. She undertakes the domestication of her materials through the creation of forms and counter-forms, negating their use, re-evaluating the notion of frameworks and devices inscribed within artistic, sociological and historical concepts.
I NEVER PLAY BASKETBALL NOW derives its title from a song by the English rock band Prefab Sprout. Much like the title refers to the idea of a team, Eva Taulois invites the viewer to move within a cohesive combination of works, their body in movement like a player maneuvering within the installation space. Conceived as a kind of research notebook, the work is composed of suspended volumes where soft and rigid images are combined, as object-like attributes and pictorial propositions affixed to acculturated clothing. The artist’s intervention, freed from any hierarchical treatment of materials, allows for the cohabitation of meticulously sewn pieces alongside machine-made finishes and purposely-approximate touches of paint, a reflection of the free gestures practiced during her residency. Within this frozen two- and three-dimensional parade is an emphasis on the tools of display.
I NEVER PLAY BASKETBALL NOW is a re-reading of display archetypes, placing them at the centre of this installation. What if, painting and sculpture taught us to see the same way? What if, experimentation with a work of art freed it from the constraints and codes inherent to its medium? What if, beyond the origin of the art object, it was the interrogation of the tradition of exhibition practice itself that was questioned?
Chloé Grondeau / Translation by Jo-Anne Balcaen
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I NEVER PLAY BASKETBALL NOW is supported by L'Institut Français and la Ville de Nantes
I NEVER PLAY BASKETBALL NOW - Eva Taulois © Adagp, Paris, 2015 Cliché : © Julien Discrit
More about the artist
L'Atelier A.
Adagp collaboration with ARTE Creative
Interview with Eva Taulois, may 2014
(French version)
L'Atelier A.
Adagp collaboration with ARTE Creative
Interview with Eva Taulois, may 2014
(French version)
Video production : Hugues Gemignani, sound recording : Pierre Guenoun
Credits : Eva Taulois © Adagp, Paris, 2014
STARRY NIGHT
KAI CHAN
Exhibition from may 22 to june 21, 2015
For its last exhibition of the 2014/2015 programming season, Diagonale presents Starry Night by Toronto-based artist Kai Chan. Kai Chan is an internationally recognized artist from China known for his experimental approach to the medium of fibres. With this exhibition, he occupies the centre of the gallery with a single piece inspired by the work of the master of Impressionism Vincent Van Gogh. The eponymous painting made in 1889 is in fact the genesis of a two-part proposal, which Chan introduced for the first time in 2013 at the Glenhyrst Art Gallery in Brantford (Ontario), where Chan laid the beginnings of a starry sky, a sky which he considered absent from his Toronto skyline and, more broadly, modern Western cities. At Diagonale, the artist pushes this now formal observation while experiencing the same sky over a century apart, a sky whose story is told very differently from 1800. Thousands of threads are meticulously arranged on the floor and suspended from the gallery ceiling. Like heavenly bodies, the threads are then capped at their end with pierced pieces of paper in order to let the light out. Registered in the industrial look of the gallery with its pipes, metal, and concrete, the work finds itself in radical opposition to the woefully outdated rural romanticism of Van Gogh’s skies. The contemporary horizon filled with power systems, invaded with satellites, perverted with aircrafts, visual nuisances and noises became one of the strongest symbols of our era. Starry Night is an in situ installation finely composed by this master of textiles who seeks to reflect the fragility and complexity of modern life.
For more than 35 years, the work of Kai Chan has fed from life and the immediate environment. Branches, threads and recycled objects become material to develop his lyrical and minimal work, a crystallization of the questioning of our existence in the world and the passage of time. Kai Chan tends to free himself from what he knows to create a new universe that refers to the enigmatic and ambiguous sides of day-to-day life. He masterfully handles ancestral craft techniques, generating proposals far from the traditional textile artefacts seen in contemporary art.
PELT (BESTIARY)
INGRID BACHMANN
Exhibition until may 2, 2015
Pelt (Bestiary) is a part of the official programming of the art fair Papier15
Julia-Maria Daigneault, Prix Diagonale 2014 - UQAM
PRIX DIAGONALE - AWARD
EXHIBITION UNTIL MARCH 14
Diagonal supports emerging artists and delivers an annual award to students in visual and media arts, who have distinguished themselves by the quality of their work through their relation with the fiber. Having experienced an absence in its 2013 program due to a grand moving project, the 2013 and 2014 Prix Diagonale (award) will be presented together under one exhibition.
Prix Diagonale 2014
April Martin - Concordia
Julia-Maria Daigneault - Uqam
Prix Diagonale 2013
Tristan O’Malley - Uqam
Taylor Cada - Concordia
Éloïse Plamondon-Pagé - Laval University
Stéphanie Leclerc-Murray - Uqac
Valerie Kolakis, Chara, 2014
CHARA
VALERIE KOLAKIS
+
ESSE 83 - Religions
Opening Chara and Esse 83 launch, January 15 at 7 p.m.
Exhibition Chara until february 21, 2015
Chara - Valerie Kolakis
“My work is an exploration of architectonics in relation to issues of migration, displacement and change. The underlining themes behind my work are of subtraction, vacancy and the false referent in the urban landscape. Specifically, it is a conceptual investigation of how identity is constructed and subsequently constrained by society and its physical spaces. Chara, translated from the Greek word meaning joy and the name of a 1950s building project in Athens, Greece. Modern Athens was formed in 1950s, when Greeks migrated to the capital in droves and required housing, creating a boom in construction, augmented by the rise of architectural modernism and the Marshall Plan. The great need for housing found its ideal tool in the solutions of the Modernist movement: concrete frame construction could provide multi story housing on time and on budget, quickly becoming so popular as to turn the city of Athens into a mono-building urban mass. The typology was loosely modeled on Le Corbusier’s systems of Dom-ino on pilotis, but where the original promise was for affordable and available quality housing these reproductions were merely easy and fast to build, providing profits for developers and the ultimate failure of this ideology. This project takes as its starting point the examining of how space is produced through social relations: shaped by our fantasies, transformed through our occupation, or controlled by rationalization and by considering the spaces in which commodities, images, truth claims, and architectures are produced. This is an exploration of domesticity, displacement and everyday objects, specifically through sculptural works that confront our ideas of representation and reality. Seemingly minimal sculptures and spatial interventions will define and deconstruct architecture, generate and suspend action, engages memory and short-circuits it, all at the intersection of the personal, cultural and social.”
Valerie Kolakis
Esse 83 - Religions
With the powerful resurgence of religion in current socio-political and philosophical debates, esse explores its echoes in the field of the visual arts. Following recent discussions on the place of religion in contemporary art, this issue examines how artists are responding to this question. The artists whose work are featured in this issue — who create fictional works with a critical or humorous slant; borrow, subvert, or combine religious codes; make direct or symbolic references; or reproduce certain rituals — address the theme of religion through situations that reveal the nature of its current significance. |
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AVAILABLE DOCUMENTS :
Press release ⇪
ACHÈTE DE L'ART | BUY ART
FUNDRAISING EXHIBITION
FROM NOVEMBER 6 TO DECEMBER 13
OPENING RECEPTION NOVEMBER 6 - 5 P.M.
+ DJ SET - 7 P.M.
+++ Catalog +++
FUNDRAISING EXHIBITION
FROM NOVEMBER 6 TO DECEMBER 13
OPENING RECEPTION NOVEMBER 6 - 5 P.M.
+ DJ SET - 7 P.M.
+++ Catalog +++
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AVAILABLE DOCUMENTS :
Press release ⇪
LA SOUPÉE, THE EXHIBITION
UNTIL OCTOBER 25
October 18 at 7 p.m. , Diagonale presented La Soupée, a micro-sponsorship project conceived as a direct fundraising and mediation tool where diners (participants) are invited to choose a project among three artistic proposals presented at the beginning of the dinner event.
A simple formula: 1 meal + 30 participants + 3 artists = 1 micro-funded project
A dinner event open to 30 guests for a fixed price distributed between the cost of the meal, and the co-production of an art project.
During this event, selected artists Chris Lloyd, Caroline Mauxion and Tim Messeiller presented their project to the dinner guests who voted for the project they wanted to support and see co-produced.
All profits from the event were donated to the project by Tim Messeiller, that received majority support, making each participant a micro-patron.
In addition to funding a new art project, La Soupée have offered a convivial context in which to share ideas and meet people. It was also an opportunity to support worthy initiatives, a time to talk about art and a space to network with peers.
The projects, as they were proposed at the Soupée, are presented in the Diagonal’s gallery until October 25.
Next La Soupée soon
You can ever book your ticket
Diagonale would like to thanks Espace 100 noms, all the participants, La Collective Rennes and François Feutrie
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AVAILABLE DOCUMENTS :
Press release ⇪
ARCHITECTONIE SUBVERSIVE
JEFFREY POIRIER
UNTIL OCTOBER 11, 2014
MEET THE ARTIST - OCTOBER 11, 2014 AT 3 P.M.
Jeffrey Poirierʼs new offering, Architectonie subversive, fits perfectly with the artist’s principal concerns. Interested in linking architecture and the aesthetic of multiples, Jeffrey Poirier focusses his work on today’s sociopolitical and ecological tensions. A sphere that seems to literally penetrate the gallery wall so that only half of it can be seen, an installation of photographs whose components are hard to identify. Presented at the Diagonale artists’ space, these immense works challenge the architecture of the premises and bring simple shapes with repetitive motifs into play, drawing their inspiration from the very heart of nature and its play on scale. The artist enjoys toying with transparency in these rhythmic and binary sculptures, thus allowing the visitor to follow his creative process. The pieces in Architectonie subversive lend themselves to multifaceted interpretations that hide and reveal themselves through the mediums of installation and photography. Meticulously selected by the artist, the exhibition’s title is a reference to the architectonic concrete used in post-war construction. Today, this economical material, which is found in certain buildings erected as major monuments, enables the artist to discuss the ambiguity that exists between the object and the material it is made of, between a structure and its aesthetic.
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AVAILABLE DOCUMENTS :
Press release ⇪
HOURGLASSES
CAROLINE CLOUTIER
UNTIL JUNE, 21 2014
MEETING WITH THE ARTIST, JUNE 21, 3 PM
The exhibition Hourglasses presents a new series of installations by Caroline Cloutier. The artist has produced a triptych of large format works for Diagonale’s new gallery that closely reflect the site where they are installed, extending across its walls, and playfully engaging its angles, corners and height. This exhibition puts forward three recent variations of the artist’s work with polypropylene paper. Since 2012, Caroline Cloutier has favored the use of this material for her photographic installations: large-scale photo montages, conceived as architectural trompe-l’œil, or abstract images composed of subtly varying shades of grey.
In Hourglasses, the artist reuses sections of polypropylene paper from her previous exhibitions. Peeled and cut into thin strips, they undergo various manipulations inspired by movements from weaving and spinning. The artist’s methodical repetitions echo certain ancient figures, where mythology meets the daily rituals of women’s gestures: Ariadne unwinding her thread, Penelope weaving, or Rapunzel letting down her hair. Caroline Cloutier gives free reign to new and familiar motifs, both abstract and symbolic, drawn from simple details found within the language of textiles and landscape, such as arrows, waves and hair. The work then becomes animated by a new undulating movement that grows beyond the frame of the paper and into the exhibition space. By repurposing these shades of grey, the raw material of her artwork, the artist further diverts their meaning. Smooth surfaces are transformed into filaments that form both random and geometric shapes where the line is at the centre of the work. Through the transparency and layering of these lines, and in their animation, the works invite contemplation and wandering, engaging the viewer’s sense of observation and physical presence.
Claire Moeder
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AVAILABLE DOCUMENTS :
Press release ⇪
FOUNTAINWARD
ALISHA PIERCY
EXHIBITION ON VIEW APRIL 3 to MAY 10, 2014
After several months of construction, Diagonale finally moves home. Located in Mile End, at the heart of a new dissemination hub dedicated to the visual arts, our newly renovated gallery joins five other artist-run organizations to create an exciting nerve centre of artistic creation. This presents a great opportunity for the new team to update its mandate and reaffirm its anchoring in contemporary art. Unveiled this spring, the new logo is the start of many changes that resonate all the way through to its visual identity. For its inaugural exhibition in its brand new space, Diagonale has selected the work of Montreal artist Alisha Piercy. Revisiting the myth of the fountain, the artist presents Fountainward, an exhibition where this magical site, rife with the potential for febrile romantic encounters, is depicted through a series of drawings and sculptures. Images of the Tivoli fountain, multiplied in a plurality of viewpoints - but no rear views - provoke a reflection on what lies just beyond the visible. Echoing these works, sculptures occupy the central space of the gallery as strange, unidentifiable beings, seemly levitating like ghostly creatures. Inspired by vintage postcards, films and dreams, this protean artist feeds her singular visual language from these varied sources. As an artist, author, poet and art restorer, she borrows from Chinese painting, ancient tapestries and japanese manga. Hers is a dreamlike universe where animal forms and fountains collide with explosions and smoke, troubling the viewer with the mystery these effects conceal. Within the genesis of Alisha Piercy’s work is a game of concealing and revealing, in which these mysterious spaces, straight out of a hybridization of children’s tales and Baudelairian text, seek to trick our gaze.
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AVAILABLE DOCUMENTS :
Press release ⇪
PRIX DIAGONALE - AWARD
This month is extra busy with final year student exhibitions in visual and media arts, and Diagonale's staff and board members have been out to select the recipients of this year's Prix Diagonale. The award is given annually to visual art students from Quebec universities whose work demonstrates excellence in the medium of fibres.
This year, the Prix Diagonale was awarded to April Martin and Julia-Maria Daignault for their work presented as part of Concordia University's Advanced Fibres and UQAM graduating class exhibition. Diagonale is pleased to offer April and Julia-Maria a one-year membership to the centre and will show their works in our next group exhibition of Prix Diagonale award winners.
Congratulations April and Julia-Maria!
Julia-Maria Daignault, N.5, 1479 frames CMYK, 2014
PRIX DIAGONALE - AWARD
This month is extra busy with final year student exhibitions in visual and media arts, and Diagonale's staff and board members have been out to select the recipients of this year's Prix Diagonale. The award is given annually to visual art students from Quebec universities whose work demonstrates excellence in the medium of fibres.
This year, the Prix Diagonale was awarded to April Martin and Julia-Maria Daignault for their work presented as part of Concordia University's Advanced Fibres and UQAM graduating class exhibition. Diagonale is pleased to offer April and Julia-Maria a one-year membership to the centre and will show their works in our next group exhibition of Prix Diagonale award winners.
Congratulations April and Julia-Maria!
Julia-Maria Daignault, N.5, 1479 frames CMYK, 2014