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.

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.

Mathieu Levesque was at Galerie Trois Points last Saturday to give a talk about his work. He explained his approach to painting and gave some insights into the practical aspects of his process. For a review of his current show at Galerie Trois Points, see this post.

Here is a short video capturing the highlights of his gallery chat:

If you’re looking for an anti-dote to the winter blahs, check out the exhibition Goût d’éclats by Mathieu Levesque which just launched at Galerie Trois Points.

Spiderwebs of paint-drips envelope wall-mounted pine slabs, their pointed angles jutting into space. The softness and playfulness of the thick paint blobs are a sharp contrast to the hard-edged geometric supports they cover. The paint is riotous, exploding at random on the polished wooden surface, shimmering in every colour of the rainbow. Get a little closer, and you’ll find small plastic toys embedded in the thick dollops of paint, there are a few stickers, and I think I even spotted a paint-covered tooth brush. One of the artworks features a heap of white paint, squeezed on the top of a wooden slab like a cupcake icing, topped with sprinkles. Look a little to the left, and there’s another heap of brown paint, squeezed in a similar fashion, but somewhat reminiscent of a pile of dog poo (but of a very tiny dog). Who said art had to be serious?

If you’re planning to visit the Belgo for Nuit Blanche à Montréal this Saturday, make sure you drop by Galerie Trois Points to see Mathieu Levesque in action, and you’re even invited to assist in his “painting orgy”. Sounds like fun.

For a complete list of the Nuit Blanche events in the Belgo, check out this earlier post.

Galerie Trois Points
space 520
Mathieu Levesque
Goût d’éclats
February 19 – March 19, 2011
www.galerietroispoints.qc.ca