The house plant possesses the cinematic ability to oscillate between the highly significant and the background prop. As a body of signification, the plant exists in relation to one individual: its caretaker. Even if a couple bought their asparagus fern together—taking turns carrying it on the walk home from the nursery, potting it on the first kitchen table that belonged to them and only them—only one half of the pair will remember to water it. It grows because of this individual, it makes it through the winter. As long as the fern is contained in a pot, in an apartment, in the middle of a city, its life is dependent. So the individual loves it, because he understands that it needs him. But the house plant can die, and the house plant is left behind, and the house plant is, of course, non-sentient.

The strange void that potted dracaena, fiddle leaf fig trees and philodendrons fill in our lives is explored by artists Evergon and Jean-Jacques Ringuette, with the exhibition HOUSEBOUND: Portraits from the Winter Garden, at Galerie Trois Points until April 22. The photographic works are an examination of interiority, reminiscence, and the beauty of the botany we keep.

A grid of 31 inkjet prints (3×10, plus one frame added to the top right corner) dominates the show. Brightly lit and placed in front of the same cool grey background, various potted plants sit for their portraits. One after the other, they are uniformly lined up like in an obligatory yearbook page for an aloof graduating class. They are a motley crew. “Margaret,” the bulbous and key lime green succulent, is slouching out of her tilted pot. “Echo”â€s pink petals cascade whimsically from a tall glass vase, like the girl from the wealthy family who doesnâ€t brush her hair. “Émilie” broods in a dark green tangle, at odds with the sunny yellow of the planter she crouches in. The camera captures the ridges of a vein, the glints of reflected light, and the vast negative space that respects each ‘lady-plant†as a subject. Within HOUSEBOUND, the exotic flora are yours for a moment. Without having to tend to their soil, it is possible to imagine complaining to “Margaret” about the morning rain or glancing in the hallway mirrorâ€s reflection of both you and “Echo” to check your teeth. You bring them the nourishment of the outside world; you are their caretaker. In return, they give you beautiful company.

Artist Evergon is also known as Celluloso Evergonni, Eve R. Gonzales and Egon Brut. The Canadian photographer is internationally acclaimed for his technological innovation (non-silver processes, electrostatic works and life-size holograms, for example) and thematic of sexuality, gender, aging and the body. A professor emeritus of studio arts at Concordia University, Evergon lives and works in Montreal. His work has been shown from Los Angeles to Shanghai, but, in recent years, Evergonâ€s health has rendered him housebound. The exhibition is a collaboration with former student, friend and model Jean-Jacques Ringuette, capturing living things that only live indoors. The creative partnership may be symbiotic in the same way that a plant and its human individual are. When art is made, is this not a form of photosynthesis?

The show also features a series of memento mori-style still-life prints. Unlike the rich, natural colors of the house plants, the still lifes conjure fleshy decay. At luncheons where meat is served, it sits on a platter as the centerpiece of the table. After the lunch guests are full and float on to the next room, while the unfinished carcass is neglected. Purposeless, its death is consummated. The flowers of these visually opulent images are browning, their petals brittle and tendrils wilted. The crowded frames feature water-damaged photographs, bronze amphibian figurines and a model skeleton. Glittering red rubies of DayQuil and cherry tomatoes are scattered on the table, posing the question: ‘what does one do to feel well?â€. The scene suggests the simultaneous existence of the living, the already-lived, and the intangible nostalgia for life itself. As a testament to expiration, these still-lifes subscribe to the more cynical ontology of the house plant: it is painfully perishable.

From sunny windowsills and forgotten dentist office corners, plants extend stems of companionship, whispering to its caregiver. Evergonâ€s Winter Garden reminds viewers to water, resoil and tend to these symbols of how marvellous life is while it is still living.

“A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,
And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,
And the dry stone no sound of water. Only
There is shadow under this red rock,
(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),
And I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.”
Thomas Stearns Eliot, The Waste Land

What is the role of photography in shaping our collective imagination of a landscape?
For over 150 years, the image of the landscape has been formed through a variety of photographic traditions and genres.

In America, photographyâ€s development coincided with the exploration and the settlement of the West. Their simultaneous rise resulted in a complex association that has shaped the perception of the Westâ€s physical and social landscape. In the early years, in the 1860s and the 1870s, the federal government played an important role in the creation of the photo image of the American West and in its visual documentation that affirms and expands the central myth of the West in American thought. They sponsored ambitious exploring expeditions, employing scientists and photographers. The photographers involved, such as Timothy O’Sullivan, Carleton Watkins, William Henry Jackson, John K. Hillers, documented the region’s highest peaks and deepest canyons, its grandeur and immensity. Through these photographs, most Americans encountered the West for the very first time. They depicted the West as terra incognita outside of time and history, an unoccupied place rich in natural resources and ready to be developed, ignoring the central fact that the conquest of the West would involve not only just a struggle with a wild landscape, but a struggle with the peoples who already lived there.

West America recurs in the first solo exhibition by Isabelle Hayeur and organized by the Hugues Charbonneau Gallery. But this time, it is a completely different image of the West, one that addresses cultural dislocation, environmental devastation and failed social aspirations.
Desert Shores (Lost America) (2015-2016) presents the new series documenting the deserted region of Salton Sea, in south-western California. Hayeur has selected five photographs from this vast body of work, as well as a 35-minute video and an album of 60 other photos from the series for on-site consultation.

Her artistic approach examines the relations between nature and culture, a somewhat critical eye on what American society had become. Altered landscape is  the one of the most recurring themes in Hayeur’s practice, presented by using video and photography to explore the ways we relate to the places we live in and to investigate the impact we have on the land and our environment. She has mostly documented industrial areas, tourist sites and abandoned places, following the spirit and aesthetics of the “New Topographics”, a label for a group of photographers (Robert Adams, Lewis Baltz, Bernd and Hilla Becher, Frank Gohlke, Nicholas Nixon, and Stephen Shore) who came to prominence in the 1970s. They brought a new perspective to landscape photography which focused on an objective documentation of locations, as well as emphasized the relationship between man and nature through the documentation of human intrusions on land.

Desert Shores documents the area surrounding the Salton Sea, a large salt lake located on the San Andreas Fault, accidentally created at the beginning of the last century when the Colorado River overflowed its banks and was contained. In the 1950s and 1960s, it became a very popular attraction and its shores were dotted with numerous hotels, marinas and yacht clubs. Towards the 1970s, it was observed that the lakeâ€s water level was dropping and its salinity rising, in direct relationship with the augmentation of agricultural activity in the surrounding area. The mirage was replaced by no-manâ€s lands and ghost towns: today this area is deserted and desolate, alluvial deposits saturated with fertilizers and pesticides pollute the water, and algae blooms are decimating fish stocks. Beachside resorts have given way to trailer parks, homes for the poor, the marginalized, and Mexican immigrants.

The Hayeur’s work depict a dystopian land and the failed modernity dream. Not far from Palm Spring and California studios, a vast land reveals modern ruins, dried-up fish carcasses and disturbingly coloured bodies of water. Her images, loaded with political and environmental implications, awaken in us an ambiguous feeling that reflects our discomfort and reveals the flaws of a dehumanized system.
Her images leave us thinking.

Hayeur’s analysis doesn’t end here.
Presenting the image titled Exposure (a blinding light enter through a broken window on an abandoned site) introduces another concept, the Meta-photography (from the Greek word μετά: “beyond”, “upon”, “adjacent” or “after”) a theory investigating the photography itself. The window, the world in a frame, together with the light, two basic tools of the photography process, become metaphor of the the medium itself. Hayeur reminds that photography couldn’t be entirely a neutral objective act or impersonal record because it is always a subjective vision, a personal interpretation of the subject. The composition is always dictated by the photographer’s personal thoughts.

In this case, Hayeur’s vision maintains order and beauty despite all the fragmented landscape. Reporting photographer Robert Adams’s words: “By Interstate 70: a dog skeleton, a vacuum cleaner, TV dinners, a doll, a pie, rolls of carpet… Later, next to the South Platte River: algae, broken concrete, jet contrails, the smell of crude oil… What I hope to document, though not at the expense of surface detail, is the form that underlies this apparent chaos”.

Eleonora Milner

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.

Opening last week, the biennial – currently in its 14^th edition – features 29 artists (emerging and established) from 11 countries who will exhibit at 16 sites across Montreal over the month long event. Four artists will present their work in Belgo Building galleries. Conceptual artist and curator, Joan Fontcuberta, conceived of this yearâ€s theme, The Post-Photographic Condition. Each of the exhibits and the related discussions fit within one of the biennialâ€s three core conceptual frameworks, also conceived by Fontcuberta.

The first framework sees an exploration of the idea that weâ€re witnessing the establishment of a new visual order, which is changing the way images are understood and used. Images have now become immaterial, viewed solely as digital objects, and more easily shared than ever; the landscape is characterized by a massive increase in the number and the availability of all kinds of images. Their ubiquitous nature now means that photographs are not valued in the way they once were. Their ease of use, and ease of transmission, has also made communicating via images a day-to-day experience for most people.

Fontcuberta calls the second conceptual idea Reality Reloaded, with obvious reference to The Matrix. In the same way Neo plugged into the matrix, we are now able to engage with a parallel reality in the online world. Although the Internet can be said to act as a mirror of the real world, this mirror and our perception of the reflection is not always accurate. The line between reality and illusion, lies and truth, can be impossible to ascertain. Fontcuberta poses the questions: is what we see on our screens just an interface between subject and object, or is the online image its own reality – a documentation of the world in image form, and ultimately a new form of reality?

In the third framework, Reviewing the Subject, there is a dialogue discussing the way digital culture is changing our construction of society, and the fashioning of our individual identities. The “selfie” has created a new genre of imagery. It has had a huge effect on how people present their own image to the world – itâ€s the first time in history people have had complete and utter control over how their own personas are perceived by others. Even though, people’s reactions to these images are not always predictable.

The biennial also features a number of events, including: the presentation of the Dazibao Prize, artists†talks, a portfolio review session, workshops, and guided tours. MPM will conclude with a three-day conference, “À partir dâ€aujourdâ€hui … Reconsidering Photography,” in which nine invited scholars will give papers and form panels to discuss the theme and its associated issues. The biennial runs until October 11, 2015.

The Belgo Building will host four artists as part of the biennial:

Centre des Arts Actuels Skols
Christina Battle, “The people in this picture are standing on all that remained of a handsome residence.”

Galerie B-312
Liam Maloney, “Texting Syria”

Galerie Joyce Yahouda
Paul Wong, “Multiverse”

SBC Galerie dâ€Art Contemporain
Isabelle Le Minh, “Tous Décavés”

An exploration of the sublime crosses over Marie-Christine Simard’s work in various ways: through photographic and pictorial work on landscape, through a visual exploration of scent and in seeking epiphanies in everyday occurrences.

The series Héros presents a cast of characters searching for a state of contemplation that belongs to the experience of the sublime. Each of them refers to an archetypal representation of courage in History, art history, pop culture or in the biographies of mythic artists. The hero represented here carries an accepted singularity. Their actions are subtle feats that rest on a know-how rather than an emphatic display of strength or excellence.The subjects expand our preconceived ideas of heroism without presenting antiheroes.
(from Les Territoires press release)

La galerie les territoires 
space 527
Marie-Christine Simard
HEROS
December 2nd – 18th, 2010

www.lesterritoires.org

Yacine Mseffar began practicing photography by the age of 17. His contacts and collaborations with photographers such as Raphael Mazzuco and Peter Beard strongly influenced his relationship with this medium. It was after his collaboration with Peter Beard that he began his passion for nature in his photographic works. Yacine Mseffar seeks to reveal the parallels between the shapes, textures, and lines found in nature and those used in architecture and design.

Exhibition Dates: November 4th – December 11th, 2010 – Space 1

Damián Siqueiros uses digital photograph as a medium to erase the boundaries between reality and fiction. His work thus produces images that are reminiscent of the aesthetics of Romantic paintings through processed light or the mise en scene of his characters. With La vie comme une performance, Damián Siqueiros explores the influence of society and religious institutions on a coupleâ€s identity, construction, and perception. It seeks to create a dialogue between viewer and image, and bring into question oneâ€s own identity.

Exhibition Dates: November 4th – December 11th, 2010 – Space 2

(from press release)

galerie [sas]
space 416
Yacine Mseffar & Damian Siqueiros
November 4th – December 11th, 2010
www.galeriesas.com

Galerie Joyce Yahouda is hosting simultaneous exhibitions: Along the Way and Jazzissimo Joiseau.

Corine Lemieux’s photographic series Along the Way makes do solely with what already exists, with situations as they occur in daily encounters or activities. She produces series, that are always linked to questions of the complexity of human relationships, the ungraspable nature of phenomena, trasition and death, the space we cohabit, and finally a series of found words that in a certain way name all these realities. The exhibition is an open ended series that began in 2001 and constitutes the Along the Way ensemble.

and

Through his maquettes, Zipertatou’s Jazzissimo Joiseau attempts to reproduce the state of mind we immerse ourselves in when we play; a state of mind that brings us back to childhood. Play enables us to surrender the seriousness that characterized adulthood; the seriousness that implies a rational and reflective state of mind when facing the world.

(taken from galerie Joyce Yahouda press release)

Exhibition: October 14th – December 11th, 2010

Galerie Joyce Yahouda 
space 516
Corine Lemieux + Zipertatou
Along the Way + Jazzissimo Joiseau
October 14th to December 11th, 2010

www.joyceyahoudagallery.com

 Presque des naufrages… fictions poétiques is the result of Michelle Héon’s fascinating journey on the Trans Siberian that brought her to the oriental regions of Russia. The might and the excessiveness of the rivers, the lake’s abyssal depth and unsettled surface, all were joined in an alliance of photography and installation, yet leaving space for oneiric activity that plunges the spectator in an encompassing fascination, but not knowing what might be there.

The work feeds on the experience of being in this world, here and now, from where always theses fringes, this edge, almost at a distance that calls to mind the places, the positions for each of us, in constant displacement and motion. This unfolding of space and time carries us back into the world of fiction and of poetry. The weft of the glistening sea, the hairy sea grass, the overwhelming waves and the small vessels offer many possibilities for narratives.
 (taken from the Galerie Trois Points press release)

Vernissage: Saturday, September 11th, 3pm

Galerie Trois Points
space 520
Michelle Héon
Presque des naufrages Рfictions po̩tiques
September 11th -October 9th, 2010
www.galerietroispoints.qc.ca

Robyn Cummingâ€s most recent series of photographic works are presented in Frisette. Cumming assembles something familiar yet strange, seductive but uncomfortable in this photographic series.Taking cues from old stock photography, cliché nature photographs, and traditional studio portraits, Cumming makes light of both our relationship to our own materiality and its manifestation as a photographic image. Between the poles of subject and object is where the crux of Cummingâ€s imagery lies; the perceived individual has become a prop, staged amongst a strange and decorative facade.

( from galerie Push press release)

galerie Push
space 425
Robyn Cumming
Frisette
September 16th to October 16th, 2010

Vernissage – Saturday, September 18th, 2-5pm
www.galeriepush.com

Cipher – Sarah Mangialardo

Cipher is a series of large scale color photographs that examine the ambiguity of memory and the visceral effects of hidden trauma. Imbued with both the immediacy of crisis and the memory of myth, Sarah Mangialardoâ€s photographs call into question issues surrounding subjectivity and interpretation. The images feature landscapes punctuated with shifting forms, childlike figures that gesture towards intangible spaces and bleed into their surroundings. These characters play out an uneasy narrative based around the traditions of allegory and myth.

(from galerie les territoires press release)

La galerie les territoires 
space 527
Sarah Mangialardo
Cipher
September 2nd to 21st, 2010

Opening – Thursday, September 2nd, 2010

http://www.lesterritoires.org