MAC 2019: Summer Exhibition

Rebecca Belmore, Nadia Myre, Chloë Lum & Yannick Desranleau, Ragnar Kjartansson & The National

The Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal (MAC) has just opened its summer exhibition. This exhibition, which has not been originally previewed, is taking place because the museum's renovation project that had been scheduled to begin this summer was postponed. (You can read about MAC's transformation plans here.) MAC will continue to hold its activities throughout the summer and early fall in its current location, on Saint-Catherine Street, offering various programming to its visitors. 

Rebecca Belmore

June 20 -October 6, 2019

MAC presents an award-winning Anishinaabe artist Rebecca Belmore. Her sculptures, videos, and photographs address some urgent issues of Native history and of our times. This exhibition was originally organized and presented last summer (2018) by the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO), under the name Facing the Monumental.

Nadia Myre

June 20 to August 4, 2019

MAC also presents works of a Montreal Native artist Nadia Myre. Some of the pieces come from the MAC's permanent collection, others were newly acquired.

Nadia Myre deals with the topics of Indigenous identity, desire, loss, resilience and knowledge. Meditations on Red, 2013, is a series of photographs depicting a meticulous bead-work. Through this piece, Myre offers a critical reflection on identity as defined by blood and concepts such as “white man” and "red."

Chloë Lum & Yannick Desranleau

June 20 to August 4, 2019

Chloë Lum & Yannick Desranleau, are also included in the MAC's summer program. Their large installation is full of seemingly unrelated objects and vibrant colours. They move the objects around and wrap themselves into them during their performances.

Click on images to enlarge them.

Hover your mouse over images for description and credits.

In August, MAC Museum will once again partner with  MUTEK festival by presenting the world premiere of the ISM Hexadome installation, a collaboration between MUTEK and the Institute for Sound & Music in Berlin (ISM).

For more information about MAC, visit the museum's website.

McCord: The Polaroid Project

THE POLAROID PROJECT

AT THE INTERSECTION OF ART AND TECHNOLOGY

A CANADIAN EXCLUSIVE AT THE McCORD MUSEUM

June 13 - September 15, 2019

McCord Museum is hosting the Canadian exclusive premiere of The Polaroid Project: At the Intersection of Art and Technology. This international exhibition is organized by the Foundation for the Exhibition of Photography, New York / Lausanne, in collaboration with the MIT Museum in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and the WestLicht Museum for Photography in Vienna. It is presented by La Presse +.

The exhibition features original works of some 100 of the celebrated international artists of the 20th century, including Andy Warhol, Robert Mapplethorpe, David Hockney, Chuck Close and Charles Eames, along with acclaimed Montreal artists like Evergon. The exhibition covers a wide variety of formats, ranging from the standard Polaroid (10.7 cm by 8.8 cm) to some very large sizes, including one assembly measuring 1.44 m by 2.99 m.

Polaroid had strongly impacted the Montreal’s photographic scene. This slice of the city’s history is illustrated by works of Montreal's three acclaimed artists known for their experimenting with Polaroid: Louise Abbott, Benoît Aquin and Charles Gagnon.

The exhibition also presents the  development of various Polaroid cameras and accessories. It highlights the vision of their inventor, Edwin Land (1909–1991), and the Polaroid camera development process that inspired creators around the world. Land's main focus was to bring the photo camera to every person. It was his purpose that people collectively exercise their creativity and artistry in capturing their reality, the images of their friends, family, and surroundings. The idea of being able to capture and freeze a moment of existence and hold onto it, to embody it with a sense of purpose, permanency and even eternity, is strongly present at this exhibition.

In keeping with its role as Montreal’s museum of social history, the McCord Museum has been encouraging Montrealers since April 2019 to contribute to the “Polaroid Project” by donating their photos to an ongoing and constantly evolving photographic installation piece that you will discover in the last exhibition room.

Click on images to enlarge them.

All photos by Marilyn Aitken, courtesy @ McCord Museum

For more information on current exhibitions, visit the McCord Museum website.

CCA 2019: Gordon Matta-Clark

Gordon Matta-Clark
Out of the Box

June 7 - September 8, 2019

The Montreal's Canadian Center for Architecture is dedicating its 2019–2020 Out of the Box exhibition series to the works of a trained architect and conceptual artist Gordon Matta-Clark. The items on display were all donated to the CCA by the Estate of Gordon Matta-Clark in 2011.The donation consisted of Matta-Clarke's archives: his professional works such as writings, photographs, films, correspondence, and select artworks that were produced between 1969 and 1978.

Though Matta-Clark had a rather short life (he died at age 35, 1943-1978), he is best remembered for his monumental deconstructive pieces, the bold artistic statements created inside and out of the condemned masonry soon to be demolish. In one such case, the area was zoned for the future iconic building of the Paris' Pompidue Center.

This exhibition is the first part of the study of the CCA Matta-Clark archives, that will be presented to the public in three acts. To explore Gordon Matta-Clark’s critical practice within the architectural scene of the time, the CCA has invited for this series of exhibitions three guest curators from different curatorial backgrounds ranging from contemporary art, film and archival research, to social practice studies.

This first series is curated by Yann Chateigné. It reflects on Gordon Matta-Clark’s material thinking as deducted from his highly diverse personal library. It classifies the books into four main categories of his reading interest: Alchemy, Gravity, Networks, and Inner Spaces. 

The exhibition reveals lesser-known references in Matte-Clark's work that artist expressed during the decade of his artistic practice.

Click on images to enlarge them.

Hover over images for description and credits.

Additionally, the Gordon Matta-Clark Collection can be studied online. Visit the online finding aid for personal reference.

To find more about this exhibition and other projects exhibitions, visit the CCA website.

MMFA 2019: OMAR BA

OMAR BA: SAME DREAM

The artist’s first solo exhibition in Canada

May 30 – November 10, 2019

The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (MMFA), in collaboration with the Toronto’s Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery, is presenting the first Canadian solo exhibition by Omar Ba. This is the first joint project by those two cultural institutions. It showcases a selection of Ba’s major works from different periods in his career. In addition, the artist has created a large-scale mural for the Montreal public, on a makeshift wall, directly inside the gallery. At the end of the show, this work will have to be dismantled: because of its monumental size it could not be removed through the existing doors.

Omar Ba’s paintings are statement on political, economic, and cultural realities that exist in our world. His work deals with some urgent issues of our time: the global inequality of wealth and power, immigration crises, and our changing relationship to the natural world. He does it through depicting personal narratives alongside collective thus revealing the multidimentional character of his work. He would like the public to realize this about his exhibition: 

“I’d like people to see that we need to give African artists their rightful place, and I also hope they come away with a more positive image of humankind. That we realize that beyond conflict, religion and culture, we are all one. That there are no blacks, yellows or whites – only humans. I also want to convey the idea of an Africa that’s reasserting its place: of countries free of conflict and dictators that people are no longer forced to leave in order to have a good life. In fact, it’s my dream that the continent share its riches with every other country in the world in a mutual respect between African and Western leaders.”

In his work, Omar Ba synthesizes the visual context and texture of his two homes – Dakar, Senegal and Geneva, Switzerland. He combines historical and contemporary African and European motives, imagery, and many different textural element. He also uses his bare hands along with a range of techniques and tools to create his art. Most of the works are painted on corrugated cardboard. He prepares his surfaces – be they cardboard, canvas, or wood – with a black ground, upon which he layers vivid colours and complex compositions full of details. His figures merge with lush flora, fauna and biomorphic forms inspired by the Senegal coast where he grew up. Micro-worlds exist in his paintings within larger environments that evoke a shared habitat between humans, plants and animals.

About the Artist

Omar Ba (born 1977, Dakar, Senegal) lives and works between Dakar and Geneva. His work has been shown at BOZAR, Brussels, Belgium (2017); Ferme-Asile, Sion, Switzerland (2015); Hales Gallery, London, UK (2017, 2014); Biennale de Dakar, Senegal (2014); Aargauer Kunsthaus, Aarau, Switzerland (2012) among others. Ba’s works can be found in private and public collections, including Credit Suisse, Switzerland; Fonds municipal d’art contemporain de la Ville de Genève, Switzerland; Fonds municipal d’art contemporain de la Ville de Paris; Centre national des arts plastiques, France; and the Barbier-Mueller Collection, Geneva, as well as the Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris, France, and the Louvre Abu Dhabi, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. In 2011, Ba received the Swiss Art Award.

Catalogue

Published in English and French by the Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery, Toronto, under the editorship of Gaëtane Verna, the 150-page catalogue is a complement to the exhibition. On sale at the Museum Boutique and Bookstore.

Click on images to enlarge them.

Hover over images for description and credits.

Exhibition Location

The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts

Contemporary Art Square, Jean-Noël Desmarais Pavilion – Level S2

For more information about the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts exhibitions and activities, visit the museum's website.