Jon Rafman's Sculpture Garden

JON RAFMAN
Sculpture Garden

June 20 - September 13, 2015

Montreal Museum of Contemporary Art (referred to as MAC, an abreviation from the French Musée d'art contemporain), has launched a new exhibition. It features two Montreal artists: David Altmejd and Jon Rafman. I found the Jon Rafman's audio-visual installation Sculpture Garden especially relevent. You can see the physical part of the installation in the photo above, the rest exists in an electronically created virtual space of a 360 degrees video and Oculus Rift DK2.

The two physical sculptures are both made from polystyrene. One is covered with a silver leaf and is entitled New Age Demanded (Waverider Silver), 2015. The other is covered with a gold leaf and is entitled New Age Demanded (Futurisimo Gold), 2015. The one covered with a silver leaf looks like a reclining female figure. You can see similar reclining figures on the left, in the Henry Moore's drawing from the Montreal Museum of Fine Art collection. The other piece, covered with the gold leaf, looks like a stylized male bust. Both sculptures are very sleek and stylish.They are wearing very well their respective gold or silver finish, both metals held in great respect by people. Yet this glitter is "skin deep", only a make-believe, since the inside content is quite mundane.

Once you put the required paraphernalia over your eyes and ears, you become totally immersed in an audio-visual virtual reality. It exists around you, and becomes more revealed and intense as you take steps to the left, to the right, or turn backward. The two physical sculptures are constantly present in the virtual landscape that is desolate and even appears to be post-apocalyptic, with a lonely, torn-apart-man-made structure from which pieces of geometrical shapes are flying away in all directions. The strobing, pulsating sound intensifies the vision. The sound is similar to the New-Age brain entrainment type of technology with hypnotic, overpowering, and even invasive quality. Right from the start it comes on with such an intensity that it appears to be the cause of the desolation in this virtual reality, as if representing an aftermath of some sound-wave-weapon attack. 

The allusion seem to be projected that in the post-apocalyptic scenario trivial human values such as gold and silver, the prestige. the slickness, the richly clad people - all of this is quite irrelevant. It seems to be suggested that at the end only purely aesthetic values survive and counts.

The work deals with deconstructing the physical reality while transforming it into a tightly constructed aesthetic experience. Could the final destruction of the reality, the apocalypse, be for some perceived as an aesthetic experience, moreover, a virtual aesthetic experience since there will be no humans left to experience it in real terms? Or maybe the aesthetics are assuming for some a place of a new "New Age" type of religion?

The inconvenient part of this work - only one person at a time can experience it. And since it takes time, not everybody who would have liked to fully view the piece is going to be able to do so. 

For more information about the current exhibition, or any other exhibitions at the Montreal Museum of Contemporary Art, visit the museum's website.

Montreal First Peoples Festival 2015

Présence autochtone
Montreal First Peoples Festival
25th Edition

July 29 - August 5, 2015

This year, the Montreal First Peoples Festival celebrates its 25th anniversary. This is a very popular festival, attended by many Montrealers and others from far away. Many are families with children.

In addition to the music and dance shows performed every day on the stage at the Place des Festivals, there will also be several performances by the Street Theatre on July 29 and 30, with the audience sitting on the steps seen in the photo above. Also, a number of films will be shown, both indoors, and outdoors at the Place des Festivals. This year the film selection has been especially vigorous and the films chosen are of exceptionally high quality and relevance.

One of the Montreal First Peoples Festival's attractions has been already launched today, more than a month before the start of the festival itself. It is an exhibition of Michel Depatie's art works, on display at the Maison de la Culture Frontenac between June 17 - August 22, 2015. The exhibition is entitled La Traversee/Ashu-takusseu. Below is a photo of the exhibition area.

In the photo below, Michel Depatie is posing next to his work called Autoportrait. It represents not only a portrait of himself but also of a multitude of First Nation People whose images were brought together to create this very impressive digital print on paper.

Click on any image to enlarge it.

To learn more about Michel Depatie's La Traversee/Ashu-takusseu visit the Ashu-takusseu project's website:

http://ashu-takusseu.com

For more information on the Montreal First Peoples Festival, all its activities, films and dates, visit the festival's website:

http://presenceautochtone.ca

MMFA 2015: Michael Williams - Yard Salsa

Michael Williams
Yard Salsa

June 9 - September 27, 2015

The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (MMFA) is presenting a new exhibition in its Contemporary Art Square. It features a US emerging artist Michael Williams. It is his first exhibition in Canada.

On display are around 60 drawings and 12 paintings. Eleven paintings are located in the temporary exhibitions' hall. One additional painting, shown directly above on the left, is a promised gift to the MMFA, and it is located in the museum's permanent collection across the hallway on the same floor.

The painting above to the right, entitled Yard Salsa, had provided the name to this exhibition. Majority of Michael Williams' paintings are first composed on a computer screen, then the file is given to a printer who prints the image on a huge inkjet printer onto a pre-gessoed canvas. Some works are considered complete and finished at that point. The others, the artist airbrushes those prints and applies additional paint. This is how some acquire a doodling impression.

Michael Williams said he identified himself the most with his painting The Morning Zoo, in front of which he poses below, because it encompasses his question whether he would continue painting if he were totally spiritually satisfied. With the man's head in the painting being Buddha-like, him holding a painting brush in his right extended hand, and the classical perspective pointing straight towards the painting, one is inclined to doubt that Williams would ever give up his art, under any circumstances.

Click on any image to enlarge it.
Hover your mouse over images to see credits.

For more information, visit the MMFA website.

GUIDED TOURS 
SATURDAY AND SUNDAY, JUNE 13 TO AUGUST 30, 2015, FROM 1.30 TO 3.30 P.M., MUSEUM GUIDES WILL BE ON HAND IN THIS GALLERY TO ANSWER QUESTIONS AND DISCUSS THE EXHIBITED WORKS.