Il faut quâ€elle sache

Arprim — centre dâ€essai en art imprimé

Depuis le 17 mars dernier, Arprim — centre dâ€essai en art imprimé — présente une exposition au contenu intimiste, par lâ€artiste montréalaise Sophie Jodoin.

La pratique multidisciplinaire de Sophie Jodoin combine le dessin, la photographie, le texte, le collage, lâ€objet déniché, et la vidéo. Ici, lâ€artiste travaille les mots et canalise lâ€identité féminine, lâ€absence, et le langage[1].

Dans Il faut quâ€elle sache, un livre didactique sur la médecine est intégralement décomposé — ses pages détachées, analysées, notées, puis minutieusement sablées. Seulement quelques mots échappent à cette dématérialisation : il faut quâ€elle sache. Ces mots — possibilités infinies — sont les prémisses dâ€un long récit portant sur une femme anonyme dont on ignore le passé, le présent et le futur.

Par un processus de soustraction, le livre désuet sâ€amorce différemment. Il sâ€ouvre à la reconstruction par ses mots initiaux desquels émane un dialogue sans révélation, « sans intrigue et sans dénouement »[2]. Par le procédé de la disparition, les notions deviennent poétiques et les photographies médicales troubles. La figure humaine, la représentation du corps qui est omniprésente dans les productions antérieures de lâ€artiste, résiste à lâ€effacement. En transparence, les traces anatomiques submergent du verso des pages et les mots disséminés sâ€y juxtaposent.

Dans lâ€espace dâ€Arprim, quatre-vingts pages sont déployées. Les phrases concises se succèdent et sâ€enchainent, les unes après les autres, sur une table démesurée qui occupe au long la galerie. La table, bien quâ€imposante, est entièrement recouverte dâ€un grand pan de papier clair qui sâ€assimile à la blancheur de lâ€espace. Les pages jaunies et la surface du support instaurent un contraste de matières efficient.

En ce sens, par lâ€expographie sobre et légère, le contenu de lâ€Å“uvre est signifiant, il prime. Lire chacune des pages et chacun des mots devient indéniable, de même quâ€inévitable.

Il faut quâ€elle sache, une exposition à lire et à voir, jusquâ€au 22 avril !

Site web de Sophie Jodoin

[1] Tiré du communiqué de Arprim, Sophie Jodoin, Il faut qu’elle sache.
[2] Idem.

Marie-Christine Dubé and John Boyle-Singfield, curators of the exhibition Harder, Better, Faster at Galerie Trois Points, set out to create a myth which “reinforces the empowerment of womenâ€s identities,” an ambitious aim that it achieved very well. As I made my way through the exhibition I wondered if this show did what it set out to do, or whether it simply, but fascinatingly, reflected the status quo. The first impression on entering the gallery was one of paradox; the sleek polish contrasting with the gritty and the rough. We are inducted into a realm of “projected images” which explore the representation of the self and the other through a primarily feminist lens, delving into the complex issues of gender and cultural identity.

The first encounter is with a video installation of young Montreal new media artist, Mégane Voghell, a piece called How to Remove a Lady from its Flesh. The video is projected on a board surrounded by a yellow rectangle which appears to be spray painted on the wall. Jutting out from the video presentation is a simple table decorated with various photos of other simple tables of its kind, some with happy and sad faces made up of crustaceans. The video is a non-linear collage of influences and impressions, itself seeming to question the oppressive implications of female self-representation in our society; images which range from a girl plastering on concealer, her image viewed only through a tablet computer to another woman draining a huge blister, a picture-within-a-picture surrounded by blurred faces and forms. Virtual reality collides with the camouflaged dimensions that we create for ourselves and are inundated with continuously. A womanâ€s world is a flood of images, expectations and ideals we are supposed to live up to. A nude pregnant woman sits in a bathtub outside while a toddler runs around, and she separates from a drawn image of herself, which seems to be a Photoshop filter. Digitally-created red hair forms a towering figure with a pornstarâ€s body. Similar to a computer game visitors can select from faces without hair and hair without faces, which can be selected and chosen at will to represent the self. Meanwhile words like “short memories and unsharp masks” flash on the screen. A yellow square follows a raw young womanâ€s practised smiles which belie the anxiety in her eyes: “Shy and daring at the same time.” This fragmented, repellant yet fascinating piece successfully subverts narrative expectations and usual space, bringing you into an alternate reality. It is quite a mature presentation especially for one of Voghellâ€s age, and it will be very interesting to see what she produces in the future.

Next are Stéphanie De Couto Costaâ€s three lovely stone lithographs, each showing a woman in a state of transformation, suspended in a void of white. De Couto Costa is a second generation immigrant artist who uses feelings of cultural dissonance to retell and thwart fairy tales in works on paper inspired by feminist writing and poetry. She says her series The Bitch and the Blond is “inspired by vanity portraits and the works of women storytellers.” Notions of transformation and duality wrestle with sensually-charged portraits, women caught in a morphological state, half-this and half-that. Road Kill shows a woman crawling seductively on all fours, howling from her wolf-head, her body bearing a shroud like a skin. Mimesis shows a raven-woman, head on backwards, back facing us. Which side is front? From which side of ourselves do we express and perceive? A long veil or train of feather-cloth trails down her front. Clothing, to De Couto Costa, seems to act not only as a decorative, protective layer but a psychologically protective one as well and a signifier of identity in transformation. Motherâ€s Ghosts is not an anthropomorphic transformation, rather it seems as if a tribal costume is in a state of becoming, or is perhaps overtaking the woman. Roots creep in, the figure is headless as she disintegrate into petals or into the earth, a state of disappearance. Feathers, braids and textures cluster in chaotic but elegant profusion and make me think of the disconnect many of us feel from our heritage, and particularly of the pain that must be felt by indigenous peoples. De Couto Costa works in multiples in her process-oriented printmaking practise, and seems to meditate upon ideas of replication—of story, identity and of people themselves, continuously birthed and passing on knowledge and problems.

Olga Chagaoutdinova, native to Russia, but educated in Montreal at Concordia, is a talented conceptual photographer who captures lives in countries caught in the awkward in-between state between communism and capitalism, Russia and Cuba specifically. This series of photographs of female prison inmates are intimate portraits taken after long discussions with each inmate. At first glance, it isnâ€t apparent that they are prisoners, as they are allowed to wear normal clothes, and their prison badges arenâ€t glaringly obvious; they simply look worn out by life, possibly former drug users. Knowing that the photographs were taken after what must have been an emotional interview adds poignancy and humanity to the grid-like portraits, which in their intimacy, also reveal the walls and defenses in their visage.

Montreal artist Dominique Sirois†installation, Mimesis Trinyty, a conceptual space set in a fictional world of finance, is a video on a screen of a digital woman with a certain likeness to Uma Thurman from Pulp Fiction, reciting a computer generated text which combines the writings of André Orléan and Flaubertâ€s Madame Bovary. Round, dark pillows scatter the floor and there is a leaking of boundaries of sound and matter around the gallery as oddly-shaped sculptures are scattered sparingly from room to room and the bland computer voice echoes soft words in French. Nub-shaped polystyrene sculptures with the appearance of concrete are piled on top of each other, forming lines of replication with a few tiny indeterminate objects resting on them. A small workout weight rests on an amorphous sculpture. The wall behind the video is papered with black and white simplified womenâ€s faces, another nod to replication and feminine identity. Sirois frequently works with ideas of finance, and this installation is no exception. This financial world opens with a desk, the seat of power of a company perhaps, and the text speaks of muscular training. Merged with Madame Bovary, one cannot help but think of the role of women as property throughout the ages, their lives of increasing free agency and their current role in the financial world. We gain more power and “muscle”, but what have we got ourselves into? A complex world where we must flex our power even more dramatically to keep up. Harder, better and faster. The interpretation is left open and curious, which is part of what makes the piece a success.  The virtual reality/alternate reality presented here is a reflection of our own world, another quantum possibility. There is a sense of being trapped, as Bovary was, by her finances and need to spend to fill a void.

Olivia McGilchrist is a photographer and video artist of Franco-Jamaican origin, whose work has largely dealt with post-colonial white identity in a predominantly black culture, and her sense of marginalization. She often takes this challenging subject for her lovely portraits, and her street nickname “Whitey” has formed what has become a recurrent character in her work, the artist appearing in a white mask. McGilchrist considers whiteness to be a mental construct as much as a physical one. This immersive video installation, From Many Sides, is a departure from that theme, a side step, and it seems the artist has dealt with her issues of being an outsider for now, here merging myth very successfully in a beautiful piece. We encounter the River Mumma, or river mother/mermaid figure, a black woman swimming in the ocean, wearing a white mask—but she isnâ€t Whitey. The white-masked black figure also occurs in the Jamaican folk dance, Jankunu, so McGilchrist is exploring not only her personal identity but a cultural and mythical one as well. In this installation, lucid colours and multiple tracks blend from one to the other, with a soft, dreamy soundtrack of birds, whispers and lapping waves. We feel connection rather than dislocation. We see girls walking down an overgrown road, a family gathering at a grotto, a girl in white shorts gathering water with crockery in a river. We feel the thick haze of colour and lush emotional states. Crashing waves, pure beauty, a magical invocation on a primordial, sleepy island. It is an overwhelmingly lovely mosaic of overlaying ripples, forms and reflections. The pervasive sense of place gives you a feeling of the power of nature upon the culture. McGilchrist deals with collective and intimate memory and as well as identity in a postcolonial landscape very effectively here.

The finely curated works in Harder, Better, Faster serve to question and illuminate the often dark and oppressive spheres of influence, self-censorship and self-representation—mirrored in those processes by the other or the powers that be— as well as the passing on of ideas, of mimesis, of cultural connection and disconnection.

Visual Voice Gallery is delighted to present the exhibition 15,000 Volts by American artist Melanie Hoff. The 15,000 Volts – Passage and Control series is the result of years of experimentation with directing fractal burns in wood. Hoff manipulated variables such as the species of wood, the composition of the conductive solution, and the placement of electrodes. From these experiments, she learned how to control specific variables to create compositions. No pattern realized in this way can be exactly replicated. These artworks are a collaboration between the artist and the laws of electricity. The fractal patterns, called Lichtenberg figures, were discovered by 18th Century physicist Georg Christoph Lichtenberg. They were first noted when dust in the air settled on the surface of electrically-charged plates of resin. Hoffâ€s work fuses scientific and artistic practices by enlisting principles of physics and chemistry as mediums of art.

Melanie Hoff was born in Washington D.C. and lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. She is a graduate of the Pratt Institute where she earned a BFA in sculpture and is currently pursuing a masters degree from New York University’s Interactive Telecommunications Program. Hoff’s work has been exhibited in galleries and on screens internationally. The artist has been featured on the Radiolab podcast’s live show “Apocalyptical”, Discovery Channel’s “Outrageous Acts of Science”, Vice’s “The Creators Project” and on National Public Radio’s “Science Friday”. Hers is a research-based practice that investigates the intangible forces that shape our environment. Though she began her studies as a photography student, after her foray into sculpture, Hoff became increasingly interested in chemistry and electricity, harnessing her knowledge of these scientific fields for her art. She intends to broaden her practice with acquired skills in technology to further investigate our modern environment by exploring not only the hidden behaviors of materials but of one of the most elusive aspects of our environment: humans.

(Text: Visual Voice Gallery)

Surfaces

Roger Bellemare, Daniel Lahaise, Jennifer Lupien, José Luis Torres, Monica van Asperen

Arprimâ€s initiative À lâ€affiche assists the creation of original prints and posters by contemporary artists. Working in partnership with the Université du Québec à Montréalâ€s (UQAM) École des arts visuels et médiatiques, this project lets printing arts students get better acquainted with the printing process, and gives them a chance to work in close collaboration with professional and renowned artists for the production of one of their pieces.

The proceeds from the À lâ€affiche project go towards financing the centreâ€s activities and help fund grants for students in the field of printing arts at UQAMâ€s École des arts visuels et médiatiques.

Arprim is very proud to launch its first print series produced as part of this collaboration: silkscreen prints by François Lacasse and Marc-Antoine K. Phaneuf, on Stonehenge 100% cotton (56 x 76 cm) and limited to 50 numbered copies each. For these, both artists have explored the potential of print media within their own painting and drawing practices.

François Lacasse, a teacher at UQAM and artist, studies the physical and material qualities of color and its application methods. The transformation process plays an important role in his works, which are the results of a sequence of gestures and protocols. His work has been showcased in over ten solo exhibitions, including at the Musée dâ€art de Joliette (2009), the Musée dâ€art contemporain de Montréal (2002) and Galerie René Blouin, which represents him. Petits écrasements is in line with his recent work, but expands into new experiments incorporating silkscreen printing and the possibilities it affords with regard to color.

Marc-Antoine K. Phaneufâ€s practice, at once playful and conceptual, has been dealing in recent years with the appropriation, détournement, and transformation of found printed matter.  His work has been presented in many solo and group shows, for example at Optica (2015), Arprim (2015), Verticale – centre dâ€artistes (2014) and at the Musée régional de Rimouski (2013). In Karlsplatz Station, the artists offers an image inspired by his Études préparatoires, in which he draws explosions on the pages of books. Silkscreen printing enables him to mimic both the photographical nature of the architecture textbookâ€s page, as well as the jagged and colourful shape of the “explosion”.

Get these prints now at Le Magasin – Arprimâ€s sales area, which offers original artworks at affordable prices – online at www.arprim.org (starting May 22), or at UQAM (Judith-Jasmin building, #J-4075). Available at the prices of $125 and $250 respectively, the prints will have a 20% discount on May 21 for their official launch.

Artist book launch and reading
of the latest edition by Éditions Roselin

Si

Artworks by Martha Townsend
Text and layout by Nicole Brossard
Concept and binding by Jacques Fournier
Typography by Pierre Filion

Exhibition: May 2 to June 6, 2015
Vernissage: May 2, 3pm – 5pm

For their sophomore exhibition at Galerie Hugues Charbonneau, Séripop – the collaborative practice of Chloe Lum and Yannick Desranleau – will be exhibiting a new presentation of multi-disciplinary work. Known for their large scale sculptural installations constructed of brightly coloured – sometimes printed – paper materials, theThe Face Stayed East and the Mouth Went West (elements) exhibition distinguishes itself by referencing that sculptural work and its concepts through photo-based installation and performance.

In the last several years Séripopâ€s practice has explored the entropy of urban space. Their work occasionally engages directly with public architecture and objects (i.e. an entire building is papered and peels away over time in Avancez en arrière(2012)) and their sculptural installations are loosely reminiscent of the shapes and spaces that surround us in the public environment – buildings, construction sites, monuments – slowly shifting and collapsing with gravity and wear during the exhibition period.

At Galerie Hugues Charbonneau, Séripop is exhibiting a series of large scale photographs, presented in light boxes, depicting existing sculptural works in repetition. Through these reproductions the objects are pushed to perform in new and different ways, against their own repeated selves and in the gallery space. Séripop then takes this dynamic a step further, collaborating for the first time with dancers to present a choreographed performance. Séripopâ€s misshapen objects are activated as props, costumes, and noise-makers, while being manipulated and navigated by the performers. As core members of the now defunct band AIDS Wolf, this overt performance work is new in form but not in nature for Séripop.

(Text: Galerie Hugues Charbonneau)
More info: http://huguescharbonneau.com

For his first solo exhibition, Mathieu Grenier continues his investigations on the system-like nature of the work of art and its relationship with the exhibition space as context. Grenier designed a new installation for Arprim, in which a series of images show various kinds of paper freed from their function as medium to become the actual object of representation.

In documenting this material before the “act of art” has altered its surface, the artist highlights not only its inherent qualities but also the limitless possibilities it represents. Much like the blank page, which both haunts and inspires writers, a sheet of paper, still unmarred by text, evokes that specific moment in the creative process when there is only nothingness, a paradoxically infinite yet bounded white space from which any idea may emerge.

Through this installation, Mathieu Grenier invites the viewer to consider both the images shown and the walls of the exhibition space as sharing not only formal qualities but also a symbolic function. In doing so the artist calls out the moment of creation and the moment of presentation as two entangled entities whose connection to time can be modified.

The artist would like to thank Gwenaël Bélanger, Kevin Beaulieu, Marilyne Fournier, Marie-Josée Jean, Maude P. Hénaire, Marie-Claude Landry, Carolyne Scenna, Martin Schop, Centre SAGAMIE, PhotoSynthèse and the Hnatyshyn Foundation for supporting this project.

Mathieu Grenier lives and works in Montreal where he completed a bachelorâ€s degree in visual and media art at the Université du Québec à Montréal. His work has been showcased in many group exhibitions, at Diagonale, Les Territoires gallery, Galerie Trois Points and Espace Cercle Carré. His work will shortly be presented in solo exhibitions at Galerie Roger Bellemare et Christian Lambert as well as in the artist run centre Le Lobe in Chicoutimi, where he will also be doing a creative residency. In 2014 he was awarded the Charles Pachter Prize by the Hnatyshyn Foundation.

(text: Arprim)

More info: www.arprim.org

Thursday, December 4, 2014

Galerie Donald Browne
Solstice bazar
Vernissage from 5:30 p.m. – 8:00 p.m.
www.galeriedonaldbrowne.com

Friday, December 5, 2014

Arprim
Vente du feu
Special 35th anniversary edition
Vernissage ay 6:30 p.m.
www.arprim.org

Saturday, December 6, 2014

Visual Voice Gallery
Bill Finger, David A. Hardy, William K. Hartmann
Nostalgia for the Future
Vernissage from 3:00 p.m. – 6:00 p.m.
www.visualvoicegallery.com

Galerie POPOP
Oli Sorenson
La Société de la Place des Spectacles
Performance at 4:00 p.m.
Vernissage from 2:00 p.m – 5:00 p.m.

SBC Gallery of Contemporary Art
CRUM
119 m Above Sea Level
Participatory Performance of Texting for Telepathy from 2:00 p.m. – 5:00 p.m.
www.sbcgallery.ca