La communauté artistique du Belgo vous invite chaleureusement à sa rentrée hivernale de 2024!

De nombreuses galeries d’art, centres d’artistes, espaces d’exposition et organismes culturelles seront ouverts pour cet événement incontournable, qui rassemble une multitude d’expositions entièrement gratuites et accessibles à toutes et à tous. Plusieurs artistes exposants seront sur place, alors que nos équipes dévouées se feront un plaisir de vous accueillir dans une ambiance festive!

C’est un rendez-vous à ne pas manquer, le jeudi 18 janvier 2024 dès 17h!

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The Belgo’s artistic community warmly invites you to its 2024 winter opening!

Numerous art galleries, artist centres, exhibition spaces and cultural organizations will be open for this event, bringing together a multitude of exhibitions that are entirely free and accessible to everyone. Several exhibiting artists will be present—along with the dedicated staff—to welcome you within a festive atmosphere!

An event not to be missed, Thursday January 18 from 5 p.m.!

PROGRAMMATION

314 | Centre des arts actuels Skol
Catalogue des ruines — Samuel Bernier Cormier, Lauren Chippeur, Kuh Del Rosario, Xavier Orssaud, et Elise Rasmussen
L’éponge mécanique — Ève Constantin
https://skol.ca

325 | Atelier Suárez
Atelier ouvert – Luis Fernando Suárez
instagram.com/luisfernsuarez

403 | Galerie B-312
Les galeries-logis — Pépite et Josèphe
https://galerieb312.ca

410 | Patel Brown
Susceptibility to Gravity — Alexa Kumiko Hatanaka
patelbrown.com

413 | Atelier d’art photographique
Flore — Jean-Claude Lussier
jeanclaudelussier.com

414 | McBride Contemporain
Best Friends for Never — Adrian Norvid et Marcela Szwarc
mcbridecontemporain.com

416 | Chiguer Art contemporain
Collectionner — Thierry Arcand-Bossé, Marcel Barbeau, Dan Brault, Eveline Boulva, Yves Gaucher, Pierre Gauvreau, Lise Gervais, Jacques Hurtubise, Serge Lemoyne, François Morelli, Jean-Paul Riopelle, et François Simard
chiguerartcontemporain.com

423 | Atelier Carolina Echeverría
Atelier ouvert – Carolina Echeverría
https://carolinaecheverria.ca

426 | Arprim
Cartes universelles pour voyage sédentaire — Violaine Lafortune
Et si je me permettais de briser ces silences — Myriam Tousignant
arprim.org

442 | Galerie POPOP
L’étant aimé — Raphaëlle Groulx-Julien
galeriepopopgallery.com

444 | CIRCA art actuel
KEEP IN TOUCH–Entretiens : deuxième chapitre — Cindy Dumais
Cérémonie — Xavier Orssaud
circa-art.com

502 | Galeries Bellemare Lambert
Abécédaire dentaire — Richard Purdy
Sites auriculaires — John Baldessari, Céleste Boursier-Mougenot, Ozias Leduc, Joe Lima, Christian Marclay, Tom Marioni, Peter Moore, et Maurice Ravel
bellemarelambert.com

507 | SBC Galerie d’art contemporain
Histoire(s) de territoire(s) — Jessica Houston et Laurence Butet-Roch; commissaire Sophie Bertrand
https://sbcgallery.ca

508 | Galerie Hugues Charbonneau
Chambre émeraude — Marie-Danielle Duval
Paysages parallèles — Farzaneh Rezaei
huguescharbonneau.com

521 | Espace St-Jean
Atelier ouvert – Louis-Bernard St-Jean
espacestjean.com

531 | Atelier 531
Atelier ouvert – Kara Eckler
karaeckler.com

September 21- October 7, 2023

liza-sokolovskaya.com

Liza Sokolovskaya’s first solo exhibition, It is the Closest We Will Be, is a humorous and poignant exploration of materials and memories, featuring oil paintings, textile works, acrylic skins, small sculptures, and papier maché objects. The concept for the installation is an artist’s live-work studio, the environment filled with images, detritus, and treasures from Sokolovskaya’s life, sometimes autobiographical, and at other times fictional. The works in this show are strongly suggestive of the idiosyncrasies of memory, its permeability, the way it fades and is distorted. Certain things, people, places, and questions haunt us. The show is focused on Sokolovskaya’s experience as an immigrant and her migratory life, travelling from Uzbekistan to Montreal, to New York, and then returning home. This show is a sort of homecoming as she was raised in Montreal, but left for several years to study in New York City.  Sokolovskaya was born in 1989 in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, and her family immigrated to Montreal when she was a child. 

Sokolovskaya moved to New York City in 2016 when she began studying at the New York Academy of Art. NYAA has an esteemed MFA program, and is known for classes which focuses on technique and working from live models. After graduating, Sokolovskaya maintained a strong studio practice, during which she has explored painting pleinair painting, oil painting on mylar, textile art, making shaving cream monotypes, and more. Her experience at the prestigious NYAA refined her painting practice, but also seriously loosened her up and gave her oeuvre a sense of cohesion. She learned how to paint the figure from life, to work more quickly, and to paint more boldly with larger brushes. The result is that her paintings are more dynamic, immediate and approachable and they mesh successfully with her more experimental and playful pieces. 

When you enter It is the Closest We Will Be, you start with a mix of new and old, prints, paintings, and two fibre works, on the whimsically-painted early 20th century walls. The choices make more sense as you take in the entire exhibition. To our left, we see the distended torso of a woman with long brown hair hanging in tendrils like Medusa’s snakes, a fragment of the artist. We cannot see her face, but this oil and oil pastel painting’s title, Disease or Desire, asks the question most on the viewer’s mind. Golden Tooth, Beaded Eyes a stuffed and beaded textile piece that looks like a mask almost seems to mock or threaten us as we approach, like a gargoyle warding off those who may not appreciate the show with its bared beaded teeth and beady eyes. On the walls of the hallway leading to the main exhibition room, we see two more fresh oil paintings from this year. Curved, in cool violet, blue, and lemon yellow, is a self-portrait nude torso  that shows a body that seems to bend in a stretch, or perhaps just an odd position as she uses the selfie camera on her phone. Also pinned up in the hall is a painting of the arm of the artist’s father painted lovingly and softly against the luminous folds of a pink duvet. The works in this transitional space set the mood for self-reflection and family history.  A bright abstract acrylic skin shows us that things are about to get weird. 

Entering the unconventional main exhibition space, the viewer is probably unsure whether they are intruding upon a private studio, as there is an odd combination of coloured walls, paintings on the wall, odd works scattered about, furniture, and objects which are not normally seen in an art gallery. In the corner to the right of the entrance is an artist’s working station. On a drawing table are a sketchbook, a few art supplies, and a papier mâché Opus card that would definitely not get you a ride. Upon closer inspection we find a lumpy paper cup with questionable ability to hold a drink, and a papier mâché painted apple core, surprisingly detailed, evoking an image of the artist having just left off sketching and snacking. Set up near the work station are a bra with detailed eyes, both seductive and creepy with beaded eye-whites. You can imagine a needle piercing the eye again and again, and lower eye lashes dangle strangely. Above this bra, as if just stripped out of it, are pearlescent white papier mâché sculptures of the artist’s champagne glass breasts. Kitty-corner to those works is the shape of Sokolovskaya’s belly, and above it, gold-tipped breasts. 

Attention grabbing works a bit further into the space are the bright acrylic skins hanging near the middle of the gallery that are made to look like human skins. They are both funny and grotesque, draped over coat hangers suspended on a closet bar, as if the dotted paint garments are the artist’s human self waiting to be put on. The skin, our largest organ, allows us to feel, to touch and be touched, and to a figurative painter, the skin is so important. The way human skin looks in different light, the way it can reveal our inner workings, our muscles and bones underneath, the ripple of cellulite, the pulse of blood, our fragility, our textures. To paint skin well is to have mastered one of the most difficult things there is to paint. 

Pinned unstretched on the wall near the skins are oil paintings of Sokolovskaya’s lover posing with them. It is a bit meta, since the acrylic skins are rendered in a painterly, almost pointillist or pixelated way, and then we have two paintings from this year of the skins posed with real humans. In My Bed, shows lovers’ legs stick out from under the bed covers along with the feet of her acrylic skin. It makes me think of someone sitting with the memory of a person who is about to fade away, vanish into little dots of colour. These paintings show intimate scenes, that are a bit comical and also sad in a way. They remind me of how we sometimes cling to outworn relationships, to who we thought our lovers were, to the memory of them. On the other canvas, Your Arm, Sokolovskaya’s lover’s arm is embracing the skin of her body left behind, as if she shed it like a snake and he remains in bed with what is left of her. The human experience is inherently tied up with mortality, with wear and tear, with love and loss. Sokolovskaya touches upon this with quirky curiosity and a touch of existentialism. The unstretched canvases themselves speak to the transitory nature of the artist’s relationship between New York and Montreal. They were rolled and put in her luggage and brought on the train from city to city.

In painting, Sokolovskaya often makes portraits, painting models in class, friends, and most typically, herself. She is interested in moments that are unposed, unusual, funny, and even unflattering. Conventional beauty is not a primary interest to her in making work, and she even explores what many would call ugliness, and yet her work is often beautiful because of her skill with light, colour, and her ability to seemingly effortlessly render skin, bone, and body through a series of dynamic, rapid, yet keenly observed brushstrokes.

Perusing the show feels as if you are creeping in voyeuristically on a private space of the artist in an intimate moment. The ghost of Sokolovskaya—painted loosely on a clear curtain— showers nude in a corner, while on the bed a slice of New York margarita pizza waits for her. Blue-rimmed bowls from her childhood in Uzbekistan and round, hearty Uzbek bread are memories waiting to comfort her, while on the futon bed is a Tarot spread of three cards perhaps indicating a question about the future. The thick cards, the Tower, the Fool, and the Magician, set the tone for change and upheaval, with a touch of hope.  The cigarettes which discretely fill the space, in corners, on the sheets, in a bowl, suggest the persistence of a habit, or anxiety. The butts glow with life, skillfully painted, they seem hot and flammable. Some are long with ashes, and some are even gold, as if they are fantasy cigarettes. Sunny side up eggs are scattered around on paper plates, and even loose on a shelf, making the place appear both strange and lived-in. Are these dreams of eggs? Who is this messy, hungry person? 

We find her painted loosely in the corner on the shower curtain, a nude brunette, soaping her pits. Acrylic skins of a one-piece bathing suit and bra and panties hang beside. Perhaps the artist is showering paint from her body, or returning from the pool, and will get dressed afterwards, have a cigarette, and think about her next painting while eating her slice of pizza or finishing her eggs. On the bed we find an acrylic skin of a sock that looks like it could have come out of a Phillip Guston painting.  Papier mâché Opus and Metro cards make it especially clear the on-the-ground relationship to both cities Sokolovskaya has, and they are strikingly accurate, but also cartoon-like, somehow, in the way they are rough and thick, the opposite of what the sleek familiar cards are. The most erotic painting in the show, Red Body, is an oil painting tacked up by the shower, a pink torso of Sokolovskaya done from a steep perspective that calls to mind nudes one might send to a lover late at night, as seemingly huge fingers graze the bare surface of her pubic mound and her breasts fade off into darkness. The image is faceless.

There is a zest for life here, a hope for the future, and a nostalgia for the past, what could have been, what was and what wasn’t. The works call to mind the way that memory functions, they are wobbly, melting away in a moment. Memories are not as clear from year to year, and eventually they become memories of memories, cartoon-like. Sokolovskaya’s first solo show is a synthesis of everything that came before, and a promise for what is to come, when she returns to Montreal—as this exhibition foreshadowed—to live and work. As in Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey, however, she doesn’t return empty-handed. She returns with new knowledge, new skills, new relationships, and the drive to create new works. She also returns with the aim to create community, which she has been doing for a few years now with her Artist Confluence project that she is bringing to Montreal. 

It is the Closest We Will Be is a strong first show from an artist keenly interested in personal reflection, materiality, and experimentation. Deeply considered and finely executed, the works in this show don’t take themselves too seriously. Sokolovskaya seems to have an innate understanding that life is best felt deeply and lived lightly. To do being human well is to be powerfully present while remaining skilled at all the release and letting go that necessitate the mortal experience. In this installation there is a fascination with the self that is the pursuit of many figurative painters, especially young ones—the questions “Who am I? Where have I come from? Where am I going? Why am I here? Can I make others understand me?” arise from all deep thinkers and feelers. But beyond the personal, there is also a fascination for what it means to be human, what it means  to deeply inquire, to deeply seek to understand and interpret one’s own human journey, which, although unique, is an experience we all share.

@Liza.Sokolovskaya

La dynamique communauté artistique du Belgo vous convie chaleureusement à célébrer avec nous la rentrée culturelle d’automne 2023!

En tant que l’un des plus grands regroupements d’organismes dédiés aux arts contemporains à Montréal – abritant de nombreuses galeries d’art, centres d’artistes et d’exposition, ainsi qu’une variété d’organismes culturels – cet événement est une occasion exceptionnelle de plonger dans un univers de créativité et d’inspiration. Le 14 septembre prochain, de 17h à 22h, nous vous ouvrons nos portes afin de vous offrir un éventail d’expériences entièrement gratuites et accessibles à tous, en compagnie de plusieurs des artistes exposants.

Join us in celebrating the much-awaited 2023 Fall opening of The Belgo, a cornerstone of Montreal’s vibrant artistic community!

As one of the largest gatherings of organizations dedicated to contemporary arts in Montreal – housing numerous art galleries, artist and exhibition centers, and a variety of cultural entities – this event represents an exceptional opportunity for you to immerse yourself in a world of creativity and inspiration. On September 14th, from 5:00 PM to 10:00 PM, we open our doors to offer you an array of entirely free and accessible experiences for everyone, in the company of several of the exhibiting artists.

RSVP for the Facebook event

Galerie Bellemare Lambert April 8- May 6

À l’ombre d’une corolle

The title of Dominic Papillon’s latest solo exhibition at Galerie Bellemare Lambert loosely translates to In the Shadow of a Flower Blossom. Both the show’s title and the titles of the works provide poetic entry points, giving us a riddle or a clue while not telling us everything. I first noticed Dominic Papillon’s work at Papier in 2022 when his sculpture, Dure-Mère II was presented at Galerie Bellemare Lambert’s booth. At the Belgo, I was able to enjoy this paper, wax, and watercolour figurative sculpture more slowly. Dure-Mère II directly translates as “hard mother”, but the phrase is a scientific term for the outermost membrane of connective tissue which protects the nervous system, the dura mater. This is an interesting play on words, evoking both the ubiquitous human experience of being born to a mother, and also a thin layer that protects our vulnerability. This hollow sculpture represents a walking or posing human form, the sex unidentifiable. The paper and wax construction seems to refer to the delicacy of the human body, while the vibrant hues of the watercolour bring it to life. A headless and hollow form, this sculpture is in its foundation paper white flecked with salmon pinks and blues which give it the appearance of a gorgeous seashell, but also of disease, or varicose veins visible through translucent human skin. This seems to be a skin that someone has shed, leaving a shell behind. 

The work of Papillon is often simultaneously beautiful and grotesque. It calls to mind the complexity of the human condition, in that all that is gorgeous, enjoyable, and pleasurable in life is also temporal and bound to fade or end abruptly. We exist in places and forms which can have only temporary beauty; the material world is continuously replicating itself and leaving behind what is outworn. Is the frailty of the human condition what makes life so precious? When will the threat to the survival of our species make us treasure our own lives and the life of our planet?

Born in Quebec, Dominic Papillion lives and works in Montreal. He obtained his baccalaureate from UQAM in visual and media arts, and his master’s degree in sculpture from Concordia, where he now teaches sculpture. He is represented by Galerie Bellemare Lambert and he has shown there since 2015, and has had other solo exhibitions at Maison de la culture Frontenac, Plein Sud in Longueuil, Circa Art Actuel in the Montreal, Regart in Lévis, Sporobole in Sherbrooke, and Galerie Verticale in Longueuil among others. Papillon’s use of the human form in a playful but also serious way to evoke emotion and the human experience reminds me of the character of some works by Kiki Smith and David Aljmedt, but, of course, he has his own unique language.

Perhaps the most striking piece in the exhibition is a wall-mounted human form at the back of the first room in the gallery. Humeur acéphale II shows a limp, headless body with a sickly pallor, stuck to the wall with large daubs of pink or wine-coloured wax which resemble deflated balloons or oversized flower petals. These coloured wax pieces stand in warm contrast to the corpse-like tones of the figure, which, laying limp, recall Jesus being taken down from the cross, a scene recreated by so many artists during the Renaissance as The Deposition. Gallery director Christian Lambert said he admired the figurative wax pieces for their resemblance to marble, and indeed Papillon’s wax works do evoke classical marble figures from antiquity. 

The grotesque has long been a part of Christian art, with sculptures of suffering Christs or saints martyred prominently displayed, mostly in churches, reminding us of their stories. A wax figure also evokes death in other ways, sometimes creating a look that is reminiscent of the tradition of human bodies presented after death preserved in formaldehyde, made up and patched up with putty so that their loved ones can regard them one last time and say goodbye. Our culture has a strange relationship with life, often not valuing it while alive, but also not giving much attention to death, avoiding thought of such matters, thereby keeping death out of sight and out of mind. Wax is an interesting medium for a sculptor to work in, it resembles the human body in texture and feel, and as such, it can be used to get remarkably life-like effects. The heating and drying process of the material makes it very malleable, but also vulnerable to changes in temperature. Wax is also used by sculptors in techniques such as with lost wax casting. Wax work figures are a fascinating and kitschy human preoccupation often shown in museums as a tourist attraction, showcasing famous figures in a bizarre state that is at the same time very life like, very dead, and also often comical. 

One of the most intriguing pieces in the show is Papillon’s Humeurs acéphales, a ceramic work where the figure is cast in nearly matte black is emerging from underneath a gold-coloured blanket made from thick coils. The person underneath seems to be undergoing some sort of transformation, and three feet can be seen along with three hands. Is there more than one being underneath, engaging in carnal activities? Or do the hands and toes tense from pain? No head can be seen, and from the title we can wager that what is felt is of the mind, not of the body—the title of the piece translates as “headless mood”. To quote Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, “don’t lose your head!”

Alanguissement is another work that plays on words as well as forms, and brings some levity and pop-style (think Rocky Horror or the Rolling Stones). The word alanguissement means languor, which is a mood of lassitude or indolence. A langue is a physical tongue as well as a language, and a huge, lolling, red wax tongue is what replaces the face on this pallid waxen bust. The man seems to be taste itself, his shoulderless huge throat emphasized by the way it emerges from the wall. Most of the head isn’t present, it is simply a massive, smooth, wax tongue. What if taste had a face? What if, in the sensual experience of being in a body, taste consumed you were little more than a tongue? What kind of languor could bring about such a moment? Can our desire ever be sated? 

On the wall and floor we find Abattis I, II, III. Generally speaking, they are iron-coloured ceramic works representing roughly-hewn body parts. Abattis I is a skinny arm, Abattis II is an arm, elbow and forearm, and Abattis III is a more abstract and barely identifiable torso which is presented on the ground. An abattis is a weapon formed from a branch of a tree, sharpened, and laid out defensively before the enemy in war to delay their approach, so that they may be fired upon to exact the maximum damage. Are these body parts the weapons or parts of the bodies that were wounded by the weapons? Or both, as a human race we destroy each other, despite being one family. These body parts look worn down and manipulated by touch, we can see the impressions of the artist’s hands and fingers. The effect is reminiscent of the consequences of being human. It makes me think of all that touches us, damages us, wounds us, all the ways we cause hurt and are hurt in turn. 

Near the Abattis sculptures is Dure-Mère I, a paper bust where the head seems to be tearing away layers of its own face with its hand. Like its sister piece, Dure-Mère II, this sculpture is also made from paper, wax, and watercolour, and the colour palette is the same. We seem to be able to see through its transparent skin to the capillary and vein systems. The piece is both lovely and discomfiting. Papillon’s work is unsettling in the way it reminds us of our own mortality and vulnerability, he seems to play with the human body in sculpture like a scientist dissecting a cadaver. In fact, Papillon’s work in this series reminds me strongly of surgical models used to train medical students, disturbingly lifelike, but also clearly not alive. These sculptures are momento moris, reminding us of our ultimate demise, but also of the beauty inherent in the forms which allow us to exist on this earth, to feel, to experience, and to create. 

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Mia Sandhu

Mia Sandhu is a Punjabi-Canadian artist, born in Canada, currently residing in Toronto. She is an artist who often works with issues of immigration, identity, femininity, and sensuality. Seeing You, Seeing Me, Seeing You was Patel Brown’s second exhibition at their Montreal gallery, and Sandhu’s first solo exhibition in Montreal.  These works explore, among other things, the relationship between pleasure and shame. Her figures appear to be at ease with their bodies, confident in their sexuality, at home in their environment and being seen. Perhaps they are so relaxed because some of their most personal  physical features, their faces and genitals, are obscured by clouds of black smoke-like veils. The exhibition consists of many works on paper, made with gouache, watercolour, pencil, and charcoal. Paintings on paper are surrounded by vintage furniture (loaned from the personal collection of Patel Brown Montreal gallery director Roxanne Arsenault) and installation elements that create a homey, stylish, and pleasantly kitschy environment for her works. Her inspiration here comes from her collection of vintage erotica, her work as a set painter in the film industry, and her family photos from the seventies, all of which contribute to the aesthetic.

I first discovered Mia Sandhu’s work at the Patel Brown booth at the Papier Art Fair a few years ago in Montreal. I remember her work as exemplary in the use of materials, and striking in her portrayal of the erotic. It was a breath of fresh air at an art fair where senses are overloaded, making a lot of work seem underwhelming. Sandhu’s works on paper stood out and I was delighted to find them again at the fair in the following years. Patel Brown is a welcome new addition to the galleries in the Belgo Building, as an established gallery that is strongly curated, very contemporary, with a brave sensibility that doesn’t shy away from the erotic and the weird, traits which aren’t that common in Canadian art spaces. As a Punjabi-Canadian of mixed cultural identity, and Sandhu’s works have long examined cultural hybridity. Her work often conveys mixed feelings and experiences, dealing with polarities such as shame and self-love, belonging and alienation. 

The women in these paintings continue the connection to Sandhu’s last solo show at Patel Brown in Toronto, Golden Girls, except here, the figures are often pregnant, and the overall feel here is more erotic and bizarre. Luxuriating in their own feminine power and grace, bedecked in vintage stockings and heels, sporting full 70s-style bushes, the women seem to be part of a secret sisterhood, perhaps Sapphic, perhaps platonic. They tease us, they enjoy their own existence, and they look at us with the same curiosity with which we regard them. These women see us, the viewer, seeing them. Sandhu’s women are playing up this exchange, legs spread over the arms of a chair, frank gazes meeting ours. These women’s soft, lavish pubic hair mimics the colour and texture of their smoky crowns. Though the smoky veil that enshrouds their visages, these women peer at us with a steady and sometimes flirtatious, sometimes inscrutable regard. There is an erotic exchange of energy in watching and being watched, and these women are disrobed in a way that heightens the eroticism of their bodies and situations. They seem to be fantasy images, yet they are simultaneously beings in and of themselves. Spirits of an idealized 1970s, when free love was the thing and many people had sexual awakenings via breaking down of self or societally imposed sexual mores and conventions.

Many of the women in this series are pregnant, but they seem to be so frankly, ripe with creativity and self-possession. There is no sign of a husband or children around, and the demands of childrearing do not beckon. The sense of the pregnancies in this series seems to be in the way that women are creative goddesses of mystery, rather than possessions intended to extend the tribe and lineage. All of the women who are visibly pregnant in these works seem to be in the last month of their pregnancy, ready to bring new life—new creation—into the world, thereby transforming themselves and the lives of their babies forever. In this way, we are reminded of the artist’s role in bringing new work into the physical realm.

Mia Sandhu has a delicate, skillful touch, a mastery with line that makes one peer closer to admire the skill in the rendering of floral textiles and the details of gorgeous houseplants that surround her figures, enhancing the atmosphere of time and place. There is a pleasant contrast between the opaqueness of gouache with the translucency of watercolour, especially layered here over creamy, warm-coloured paper.  I am reminded of the rich history of erotic paintings on paper in Asia, examples of which can be found in humourous Japanese erotica, and often philosophical Chinese paintings, which represent slices of daily life, and the harmony of yin and yang represented in both sexes taking equal pleasure in each other.  More importantly is the connection to Sandhu’s own heritage, there is a long tradition of gorgeous erotic paintings on paper in India. Sandhu’s interest in putting her figures in domestic environments, surrounded by bold colour and patterns harkens to the rich history of erotic art in Asia and India, but as a contemporary painter she brings a soft but confident touch, contemporary line and rendering skill, a personal inquiry, and a sense of playful taboo. A woman, especially one raised with an awareness of Eastern culture and mores, would have a keen sense of what is acceptable and not acceptable in terms of sexual expression and modesty. The historical predominance of Christian Anglo-Saxon values on colonial Canada makes this country also not so open to sexual expression, feminine pleasure, or self-possession, feminine sexuality is only acceptable if it is a thing to be consumed and profited from by someone else. Such influences are still quite palpable here today, though of course to a much lesser extent than in the past. I do not doubt that the mixed cultural heritage Sandhu possesses has contributed strongly to her interest in portrayals of concealing and revealing. Probably it the contrast between the two states, the sense of becoming, of transition, that makes these works so compelling.

In A Vessel to Hold 4, a heavily pregnant woman regards herself in the mirror, she seems to be calmly admiring what she sees. The Vessel to Hold paintings speak of the way a mother holds their baby within, and the comforting sensation of being held, and perhaps, to hold one’s own soft, round curves, or that of another. They speak of what it is to nurture and be nurtured, and of the embracing, supportive nature of womanhood and sisterhood. A Vessel to Hold 9, a pregnant woman is attired in a diaphanous blue blouse, her swollen breasts and nipples visible over her large belly, which she holds proudly while regarding us. She seems to ask us to admire what she has made. She sits heavily with physical presence on an antique chair of soft wood and wine-coloured velvet. A Vessel to Hold 10 shows two pregnant nymphs, wearing vintage stockings and lace, luxuriating playfully on a bed lush with blue and white curtains, from which wild Queen Anne’s Lace flowers emerge. Sandhu’s pregnant vixens do not allow for the Madonna and whore duality, they convey the sexy magic of a voluptuous pregnant woman, who can still be desired and desire even though she is a mother-to-be.

In the Chrysalis paintings, the figures are again covered with thick black smoke, but they are wearing transparent fabric, perhaps gauze. The title of this mini-series implies they are emerging from silken cocoons, resplendent and transformed. In many Eastern countries, influenced by Muslim traditions, women are veiled, but these chrysalises do not conceal, they reveal the glorious transformation of the feminine body, perhaps from childhood to puberty, then maturity, pregnancy, and beyond. In Chrysalis 6, the curvaceous woman kneels on a bed, regarding us with almost frightful self-possession, eyes just points of piercing light through the darkness. She appears before large golden rings, dried flowers, and plants—familiar as installation elements in this exhibition. 

In the Waxing and Waning paintings, women disguised by floral shrouds are paired together to play, support, and embrace each other. Waxing and Waning 16 presents a figure concealed by a floral fabric leaning in to caress a reclining woman whose breast is nearly exposed as she receives a red finger-tipped embrace. The black cloud seems to seep like liquid over the bodies and the bed, almost as if it is an extension of the fluid energy of the couple. Sexual symbolism is apparent in Pussy Willows and Cat Tails, we see the “tail” of the figure, clad in a thong. The bullrushes, or cat tails, look phallic, paired with the delicate toes of the pussy willow branches. 

A play on words, and with a nod to popular culture, the bodies in Mia Sandhu’s Bawdy paintings could be considered raucously, joyously nude and lewd. They’re playing in decidedly kitschy 70s environments, enjoying their physical forms and showing off. Full, heavy breasts, costume jewelry, furry armpits, and more greet us. The woman in Bawdy 37 has a leg thrown over the arm of a wicker chair, revealing white panties. She is holding an apple, like Eve, yet shameless. This work is intriguingly presented on a wooden shelf, flanked by retro decorative elements, against a white and mustard-coloured floral patterned wallpaper, almost as a shrine. This style is reflected in Bawdy 36, where a white opaque-stockinged nymph coquettishly draws a stemmed flower between her legs as she kneels on the floor before a chair and houseplants. The painting is flanked by campy candle holders against a different type of vintage-style wallpaper. These works by Sandhu create a scene that reminds us to gracefully, playfully enjoy while asking ourselves: what is the nature of self, embodiment, and pleasure?

The signature black smoke around the women in Seeing You, Seeing Me, Seeing You, is like a dark nimbus, light but thick, allowing us to see curious, sensual eyes through the clouds. The black veils are almost afro-like, echoing the dense bush between their legs which obscures and mystifies their vulvas. The nipples and areoles are lovingly rendered, with great attention to variations of colour and texture which make them remarkably lifelike.  Sandhu’s women are queens, Goddesses, courtesans, porn actresses, mothers— archetypes of luxury, physical and emotional nurturing, and sensuality.  Their veils obscure their identity, cloak them in anonymity, beyond reproach or identification, rendering them archetypal. They play, exploring the connection to the other, to the world, within self-designated realms of boundary and safety. exposed and concealed.

Instagram: @patelbrown @mia.sandhu

Photo credit: Kyle Tryhorn @gingerhorn

Louis-Bernard St-Jean’s latest solo exhibition, Lieux Sauvages, at his studio-gallery, Espace 230, is his most current exploration of colour and texture using oil paint on panels and paper. These works are inspired by his ventures into the Quebec wilds, in places such as the Laurentians, in Lanaudière, near the Missisquoi River, and the Saguenay, where he hiked and paddled, and of his dreams to visit tropical climes and lush rainforests. This series reflects the peace and quiet of nature, where the artist finds a safe space away from the bustle of the city amongst the wildlife and the waters. 

I’ve watched St-Jean’s art career for the past several years with interest, and it is clear that he is a devoted painter. His technique of using palette knives to create abstract compositions has developed significantly and steadily over the years.  Born in Montreal in 1979, St-Jean’s higher education was in other fields, he is a self-taught artist. Still, don’t mistake him for a parvenu, painting is in his blood. Going back several generations, his ancestors painted the canvases that adorn churches and cathedrals in and around Quebec City. His parents were artists, collectors, and art dealers, and to say St-Jean grew up around art would be a vast understatement. He was raised around some of the best Canadian and Quebec art that was being made at the time, and which esteemed highly today. Unaware that he would later become an artist himself, painting was steeped into his subconscious. The entire family home was filled with works by European greats such as Salvador Dali, Joan Miró, Automatistes such as Jean-Paul Riopelle, Paul-Émile Borduas, Marcelle Ferron, Marcel Barbeau. These works were beside Abstract Expressionist Joan Mitchell, lyrical abstractions of McEwen, Quebec landscape painters of the 20th century such as Marc-Aurèle Fortin, Stanley Cosgrove, Plasticien Fernand Toupin, the Group of Seven and many others. St-Jean started painting in his early 30s when he wanted art for the walls in his home, but nothing suited his aesthetic sensibilities and fondness for textured paintings. Painting soon took over his life, and he quit his mainstream career in 2015 to be a full-time artist.

Being surrounded by such great art from Quebec and beyond, St-Jean was significantly impacted by the culture of painting of that time, which includes, of course, the ethos of the Automatistes, as well as the ideals of the Plasticiens who came after. Both movements influence his work, though it is more on an intuitive or subconscious level, fitting for the work of someone influenced by the Automatistes. The Montreal-based Automatistes formed an artistic movement that shunned religion and institutional education and sought to tap into the unconscious mind. The group’s members extolled the virtues of creating without pre-planning. St-Jean pulls on Automatiste styles of painting with his penchant for using the palette knife and other tools, shunning the traditional brush thusfar. He is an experimenter who pushes how far painting can go, building up surfaces with significant layers of oil paint, which create challenges to overcome, but he seems to enjoy pushing himself and his works to their limit, even creating successful works of thick impasto oil paint on paper, a notoriously delicate and fragile medium. With a keen sense of craftsmanship and attention to detail, attention to surface qualities of form, light, and colour, St-Jean also has a kinship with the Plasticiens which were one of the only locally-driven art movements to originate in Quebec. Responding to the Automatiste’s pursuits of intuitive creation, the Plasticiens sought to focus on form, structure, and the harmonies that can be obtained within a set of self-created rules. The best artists draw on both intuition and form to create works that stand the test of time and move beyond trends and fads, which St-Jean has accomplished in these works. 

We need to remember the words of the Automatistes in their groundbreaking manifesto, Refus Global, that changed the artistic and philosophical nature of Quebec when considering the current state of contemporary art: 

“To break definitively with all conventions of society and its utilitarian spirit! We refuse to live knowingly at less than our spiritual and physical potential; refuse to close our eyes to the vices and confidence tricks perpetuated in the guise of learning, favour, or gratitude; refuse to be ghettoed in an ivory tower, well-fortified but too easy to ignore; refuse to remain silent — do with us what you will, but you shall hear us; refuse to make a deal with la gloire and its attendant honours: stigmata of malice, unawareness or servility; refuse to serve and to be used for such ends; refuse all intention, evil weapon of reason — down with them, to second place!…Make way for magic! Make way for objective mysteries! Make way for love! Make way for necessities!”

In today’s art world, one is expected to have a master’s degree in painting from the right schools, exhibitions at the right institutions, and to be represented by the right galleries in order to earn respect. While those achievements have real value and are coveted by artists today because of the access and success they confer, let us not forget the worlds of our influential forebears, the Automatistes who rejected the dominance of institutions as crippling to independent thought and creation. Let us celebrate artists like St-Jean who are dedicated enough to their path as an painter to forge their own way when necessary. St-Jean took the initiative to create his own space to exhibit his work at his studio, turning it into a quasi-gallery where he sometimes brings in other artists to exhibit. Let us bring these two solitudes—the institutional and the independent—together in collaboration, support, and respect. 

Louis-Bernard St-Jean is known for his dramatically textured oil paintings, which are not simply intuitively placed impasto, but rather dense layers of oil paint in multiple colours which are chopped up using the palette knife or other tools to create unique effects. Lieux Sauvages continues these pursuits. St-Jean’s artistic concerns are to stretch the limits of the medium, of the capacity of what his hand can do, what paint can do, and what can be done with various tools without using a brush. He works in large format to very tiny, from heavy works of deeply layered oil paint on wooden panels to fragile, diminutive pieces on Arches paper. As a painter, he works in tight series but is continually moving forward incrementally and experimenting. The signature qualities of his works include precision, boldness, delicacy, sensitivity, craftsmanship, and attention to detail. After completing his last monochrome series in black and white, St-Jean turned to phthalate greens, green earth, sap green, olive green, viridian, and other pigments to show the varied tones and hues that nature gives us. Typically working in vertical or diagonal lines which cut up the composition of the canvas, we are given shimmering effects as the glistening oil catches the light. With their diagonal or vertical cuts into the surface of the painting we receive an impression of weather, of rain or wind. The way the light changes due to alterations in weather is reminiscent of the way the light shifts when you as the moving spectator view these paintings as you walk by them.

Les voûtes tranquilles, or “tranquil vaults”, presents thick greens shown in the gallery space as a vertical composition, giving a sense of the vaulted appearance of the spruce forest, which perhaps inspired the architects of cathedrals of Europe that later came to Quebec. When viewed horizontally, as it can also be presented, this painting is a bit like a dark and brooding Monet, a pond in the middle of a forest at twilight, reflections of the wood on the water.

Rêveries équatoriales shows us vertical cuts that, in context of the title, make me think of a violent monsoon in a deep rainforest, where bits of light peek through, illuminating the rich and dense plant life. The title of Vous êtes ici, or “you are here”, plays off the maps we see in parks, when we find ourselves in the moment, located perhaps in a place we wish to be or do not wish to be. A small canvas, it reminds us how small we may feel, like a little point on a map in a vast national park ready to be explored. Les hibiscus, beyond the greens of this series, contains touches of red and white showing under from the oil paper.

One of the best in this series, Morphologie des plantes, seems to pull on Automatiste and Abstract Expressionist influences. We have the sense of movement, texture, and colour which emerge from the land that St-Jean and his ancestors dwelled on through so many generations. The movement of the light against dark contrasts in this painting give a sense spontaneity, a work full of life and the joy of creating. The way the strokes of lemony electric green strike the eye are similar to the way light, dancing in a constant state of movement and change, penetrates the canopy of a forest to reach the humble moss and plant life below. 

In another intimately-sized painting, Asclépiades, or “milkweed”, hints of podlike forms in a grassy landscape are closely regarded. We see touches of white, a sense of milkweed fibres which are impossibly soft and pure feeling. Écoumène was inspired by a trip to the Jardin d’Ecoumène in Launadière; this painting could be a topographical perspective of a verdant landscape, or at the same time, the opposite—a sense of an up-close view of the forest floor.

The works in Lieux Sauvages reflect the verte tendre that greets us in early spring on the mountaintops of the Laurentides, the deep greens of the dense canopies of the bush, the flashes of light through the leaves of a dark forest. I am reminded of the vastness that is Quebec and its complicated history, and the colonization of indigenous lands, where this territory was entirely once simply wild. I am also reminded of the long winters, which makes Canadians appreciate the green months even more. Of battles fought on and for these lands, and the people who return to nature here to seek peace and renewal. The spirit of the land spoke to St-Jean in these works, through his observations of various present moments, and they convey the sense of pleasure and peace with their strong colour, movement, and light.

In Tabula Rasa, artist Alex Coma sets the scene of the art gallery as a sacred space for ritual. In the age of capitalism the marketplace is often presented to be our temple, and gallery spaces often serve such ends. Here, as throughout the history of art, we have spiritual intent taking precedence.  Entering the exhibition, one is greeted by a pleasant violet glow cast on the majority of works from black lights, giving the exhibition an ethereal presence and a sense of altered space and perception. Hanging in the centre of Galerie Popop were four pentagonal-shaped canvases, with esoteric images on both front and back. Stepping into the middle of the quartet, one finds landscape paintings rendered with romantic and atmospheric detail, pertaining to the four elements. Upon closer inspection, the faint traces of a pentagram and magical symbols can be seen drawn under the surface of the oil painting. On the reverse, the canvases are topped with Hebrew letters, and underneath, various symbols and magical sigils. Each canvas is oriented to a direction, and represents not only an element, but an archangel. They are the visual representations of an old ritual called the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram, more on that in a moment.

Alex Coma is an emerging artist from Granby, Quebec, currently residing in Montreal but soon to head off to Spain to work on other spiritual and artistic projects. After receiving his BFA from Concordia in 2014, he had a solo show at Livart in 2018, another AVE Gallery in 2019, among others. He has worked in painting, photography, sculpture, and installation.  Coma’s work is diverse in scope, mysterious, dark and rich in mood, with a sense of expansive peace, hope, and transformational potential. 

Near the entrance the gallery was a series of casually displayed sketches, Coma’s earlier works on paper, which appear to be automatic drawings on spiritual themes. He says these indicate his former self. The purpose of this ritual, to the artist, is to transform the intellect or personality, and the journey of the exhibition follows the ritual’s stages. Turning to the right, there is a large painting on unstretched dyed linen that consumes a corner of the gallery, lit up by projected fire. This is the opening segment of the ritual, in which the magician visualizes himself growing bigger than the earth, then the solar system, and eventually feeling the entire universe inside him. To the left is our massive sun, sending off a huge solar flare in the direction of the earth and moon, which are all painted to scale. Sacred geometry and the proportions of the planets in relation to each other are important to the artist, as well as the connection of the macrocosm of the cosmos to the microcosm of the human form. Before this fabric, a star lies on the ground upon a block, and upon the star is a burnt substance, perhaps an offering.

Tabula Rasa is an installation set up to reflect the ceremonial magic ritual called the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram, originally created by the occult Order of the Golden Dawn, and one of the most widely used rituals used in western magic to this day.  The configuration of the canvases are meant to aid in Coma’s spiritual practice, as this ritual is said by the artist to purify the intellect and the personality. The practitioner of this ritual traditionally positions themselves in orientation to each direction, draws a pentagram in the air as an act of cleansing and protection. The ritual also uses the Qabalistic cross, drawing on Jewish mysticism, and uses the names and sigils of the archangels which correspond to each element. Coma says that the paintings serve as a visualization aid to his spiritual practice. 

The purpose of this ritual is self-purification, protection, and ridding one’s environment of negative forces or energies. Each canvas represents a direction, and an element. For air, we have a pink sunrise or sunset landscape, seen from atop a mountain and just above wispy clouds. Representing water, we find a nocturnal scene of great delicacy with gentle waterfalls and tree branches and leaves. For fire, we see a dynamic erupting volcano painted in creamy yellows and smoky greys, with bold orange lava. Lastly, for earth, Coma has painted a desert landscape with a simple earthen temple, shaped something between a pyramid and an obelisk, with an entry door. 

Other works that stand outside the sacred space of the hanging pentagons are a rendering of a man’s blue eye (presumably the artist’s eye surveying the scene), a figure of a woman rendered in an intuitive, outsider art style, which Coma says was done while connecting to his inner divine feminine. We can also find a blue plastic box inscribed with an eye and symbol of Aries (the astrological Sun sign of the artist).

The strongest work in the show, to me, is one of Alex Coma’s spiritual landscapes, a detailed painting of a tower that resembles a mystical rocket, presiding over a seaside forest landscape. The style calls to mind landscape painters such as Hudson River painter Thomas Cole, or Constable, but it is considerably weirder and more intriguing. The tower is burning at its base, and appears to be futuristic in nature, with glass or metal beams but it also resembles the stone towers of a castle. At the top of the tower we see symbols such as a glowing crescent moon, a blue cube, and a six pointed star. This image calls to mind the Tower card of the Tarot, which signifies abrupt shifts and change, and the destruction that often devastates before the new can be formed. Quebec is a place that suffered at the hands of religion though the oppression of the church for a long time. As such, many in this province, intellectuals and artists especially, I have found, are atheists and scorn spirituality as well as religion as childish nonsense, or worse. It is refreshing to see a Quebecois artist such as Alex Coma bringing life into mystical themes and ideas, and showing that it is possible to explore such territories anew with fresh, young eyes, bringing us a sense of hope and possibility which we all need right now.

Alex Coma’s website can be found here

From May 28- June 13, Ar Prim hosted a group exhibition of finalists for the Albert-Dumouchel Prize for undergraduate artists. This was the 32nd edition of the collective exhibition Première impression. For me, the standout work was by School of Art at Université Laval’s Jessica Martin-Lafond, who presented Wolf in Lover’s Clothing. This work is an artist’s book inside a wooden box, the pages of which can be turned with tweezers using gold-coloured satin gloves. I enjoyed the discovery process of this piece, the disorientation that ensues from figuring out how this works, the tactility, and the use of colour and texture.

Martin-Lafond is a printmaker and artist book creator, and her work pays homage to those traditions, but is also reminiscent of female surrealists, such as Merret Oppenheim, who also worked with unusual objects and sexuality. There’s always a childlike exhilaration when one is allowed to handle the art, and this piece is no exception. There is a sense of the theatric with putting on the satin gloves, as well as a sexual metaphor to putting a part of your body into a covering to handle the art itself, to explore it within the box.

The dusty pink and gold tones, felt, and doilies and other touches made me think of antiques and femininity. This piece, with its vulvas, predatory wolves, drawings of hands, rumpled bedsheets, and delicate flowers with fragments of love-lorn poetry is playful, cheeky, and gives a sense of discovery, vulnerability, and intimacy.

You can follow her on Instagram to see her latest works, as Jessica Martin-Lafond is an artist you may wish to keep your eye on.

What I found most striking about Fait ou défait, c’est idem, Galerie Deux Poisson’s fourth show, was how collaborative it was, how well the works of these four artists worked in a sort of humble synergy that was at once nameless and named. The show was curated by artist and writer Benjamin Klein, and the curation was strong in this group show; I find group exhibitions are exceedingly hard to pull off, as they too often seem forced, like a gaggle of people compelled to hang out awkwardly. Either they don’t seem to relate at all or they are gathered simply by common theme or medium, having nothing else to bind them together. In this exhibition, however, that was not the case. It had a real grassroots feeling, a sense of true collaboration and excitement. I am going to refrain from describing each work individually; the spirit of this exhibition is the sense of unity and togetherness that makes all the pieces work as a whole. 

Fait ou défait, c’est idem, translated as “done or undone is the same”, alludes to the process of art-making. How does one know when a piece is completed? Is it ever truly done? An artist can stop working at any point and call it finished, no one can ever truly know when a piece is completed, including, oftentimes, the artist. It becomes a choice, an intuition, or it could come with being fed up or having a deadline. The word faire in French means both “to do” and “to make”, so, evocatively, the show’s title could also declare, “made or unmade, it’s the same.” One’s making and one’s doing carry the seed in the same word, as well as its opposite, as from the moment we are born—or made— we start dying. 

The first thing one would encounter when entering the gallery is, ironically, a painting by Malcolm McCormick entitled, The End. It’s roughly but tenderly composed, with black “photo corners” and white script declaring “The End” in the middle. It is plaintive, mock sentimental and also cute. Smears of mustard-paint allow one to see the underpainting as if through a screen. 

If one doesn’t strictly make the rounds, the visitor would likely then notice the impressive installations at the room’s centre. On the floor is a piano-shaped wood and cloth structure titled The Sparrow on the Hill Sees the Fool Going Around by Malcolm McCormick, a painter who also works with drawing and installations. Inside are works on paper by Mathieu Lacroix and Rachel Crummey, and ceramic hands by Michelle Furlong, along with found objects. There is a play on collaboration here, music is more frequently made in a group, multiple instruments and players create greater complexity than one individual is capable of. 

Behind this piece, on a white block rests a piece by Lacroix, another legless piece—do we have a leg to stand on without our friends and collaborators?—is a three-legged chair propped up by stacks of papers and drawings, with a ceramic hand by Michelle Furlong pointing to a spot in the stacks. After this, certainly one could not help but be drawn to the immense in situ mixed media wall piece and installation by Rachel Crummey and Michelle Furlong towards the back of the gallery, titled Experience no. 2, after a piece by John Cage. Layered with bold and gestural marks in charcoal, graphite powder, acrylic paint and spray paint, the eye follows the energy of two artists and one can’t help but visualize their process, working together, erasing the work of the other, wondering if they worked in harmony or at times, adversarily. I think of how Robert Rauschenberg came to de Kooning to ask him if he could erase one of his drawings, which was allowed. Klein told me that he witnessed the process, allowing the artists to work uninterrupted, and saw how many times it could be completed, yet a new movement and shift began. It seemed a process fraught with dynamism and energy. The piece is so energetic that it cannot be contained to the wall.

A large piece of cheap-looking wall-to-wall carpet was contorted on the floor and subjected to the treatment of paint, recalling Furlong’s crumpled painted canvases. Most of the works in this show walk a thin line between ugliness and beauty, humility and humour. A leg made of black faux fur projects from the wall, reminding me of Dada creations. The piece sports rope of a gaudy purple shade, connecting the wall to the folds of carpet like an umbilical cord, its colour standing in stark contrast to the rest of the piece’s monochrome.

A painted disc of carpet stands alone like punctation on the floor, and large strips of black velcro and fringe with what appear to be large black pasties could suggest a crude face. The sort of feminine grunge aesthetic of Crummey and the slick, cool aesthetic of Furlong make an uneasy but pleasing contrast which gives the work a sort of personhood, even beastiness. I imagined it being made with John Cage playing in the background, the artist’s gestures and erasures moving to the sound like the surges of a symphony. 

Scattered throughout the exhibition are Michele Furlong’s shiny, black-glazed ceramic hands pointing, squatting and hiding. They made me think of Thing in the Addam’s family, and their ubiquitousness felt as if they were the same hand, everywhere. They seemed at times to be the hand of the curator, invisibly and gentling guiding your attention. 

Rachel Crummey is an award-winning Toronto-based abstract artist (and writer) working with painting, drawing and installation. Her work is layered, rich, and informed. She is an emerging artist who received her MFA from the University of Guelph in 2014. Her work is most successful in series, and this exhibition has a few of her works on paper, oil pastels on paper and acrylic on board or canvas. Her play of lines and layering is often very graceful. As in Experience no. 2, her installations in charcoal and graphite look like traces left by a ghost or the residue of a spirit or slug, but it could also be a kind of unusual wallpaper, worn with time and peeled away in strips. Her small works in this show are subtle in comparison to the collaborative installation, and quite accurately she describes her work as a “softly moving web.” One of her most engaging pieces here is a network or lung of actively tangled blue lines, made from oil pastel on paper.  Much of her work is very tender and touching, and improvisation plays a strong role in her practise. 

Malcolm McCormick is a primarily a painter (and drawer) but is also a multi-disciplinary artist. He’s from Vancouver and came to Montreal as an MFA candidate at Concordia. He’s spoken of being interested in colour, the formal aspects of making, collage-style work and things that are non-monumental and subtle. His work is sometimes wryly humorous and it has a sensitive yet painterly touch.

Besides The End, another funny piece sits on the floor saying: Take Me Home. Another work is an invisible house where all you can see are illuminated windows and a hastily painted, blue-steel background with brown ground and green grass, uneven letters imploring the viewer. Does the artist wish to go home, or the painting? Every painting for sale in fact says this wordlessly, and it was charming to have it so imploringly stated as it wasn’t even hung. His other oil painting, Banging Your Head Against a Warm Rock was textured with pebbles and almonds. Overall, McCormick’s work is deceptively simple, endearingly unostentatious, but skillfully handled and exploratory.  McCormick said in an interview for his Kelowna Art Gallery duo exhibition in 2017: “ I like to make things that show an accumulation of decisions, and to leave traces of each decision so that the viewer can come into it and get a sense of how this thing developed over time”. The poetically titled, “Looking into His Ear” is a painting layered with transparent polkadot fabric, which leads one to visualize the layers and channels of the body and the delicacy of listening and looking. 

Michelle Furlong is a Montreal-based multi-media artist, a recent graduate of Concordia’s Painting and Drawing program. Her work frequently consists  of cutouts, textiles, texture, silhouettes, sharp contrasts, soft forms, stylized shapes and often, a cold, almost graphic, design. working primarily in paint, drawing and sculpture. Her work is largely concerned with the body, and hands are a major player. Her drawing sits on the floor in the corner, and is layered with outlines of hands, much as a child would use their own body as a starting point for making shapes and forms, and paint with their fingers. The effect of the ghost-like hands layered in blacks and whites and layers of charcoal, using negative space, and tucked away on the floor is at once haunting, playful, and evocative. There is a sense of ephemerality and whimsy, an awareness of temporality, of the limitations to the corporeal form in Furlong’s work. The hands play throughout the gallery, dark and shiny, slick, but not sinister.

Mathieu Lacroix is a Montreal native and multidisciplinary artist who received his BFA at UQAM.  His grid of drawings here are reminiscent of architectural drawings, but also de Chirico. Some are on vellum, some on brown packing paper. There are elements of collage, and they are all cleverly composed, contemporarily-aware works that aren’t precious at all, which is why, I suspect, he titles all of these works NON ART. They fit perfectly with the drawing theme of the exhibition and the sense that creativity will continue and art will be made regardless of the means at one’s disposal. These are unpretentious drawings, and, despite being a rather conceptual show, Fait ou défait, c’est idem is also quite unpretentious and certainly process-oriented.  Lacroix’s drawings contain a sense of resilience in their delicacy. His work uses reclaimed and recycled materials such as cardboard, ordinary, cheap substances. Art can and will continue without expensive materials and resources that often make it the domain of the privileged. Lacroix’s playful sculpture, NON ART: Chair, calls to mind the absurdity of Dada, a three-legged chair. Is it a comment on academia? The third leg is made of theory, of drawings, of studies. All of his works in this show are labeled emphatically NON ART, and then given a secondary title, in this case, NON ART: Chair. As an artist he to seek to connect to the ordinary and mundane through his subject and media, then thwart our expectations. These drawings engage with formal abstraction and imaginary space. We see a square building with grass growing out of its centre, long black hair pouring down like a waterfall; we see what may be a railroad station with water emerging through it being transformed in shape by its passage through the building, the rails of which pour with light, a power station, an A frame building overruled by a flow chart, a collision of realities and geometries, an unusual combination of formal fascination and dreamy imagination. They could be diagrams made on acid or instructions for or by aliens for human society. 

The works here as a group, and even individually, don’t say “I, I”  they say “us, we”. There is a particularly Montrealaise spirit here, a sort of “struggling artist”, communal sensibility of resourcefulness, resilience and joie de vivre. There is strong sense of line, of hesitant but necessary declaration and bold erasure. The marks made by the individual on the world, the lines that tie us together. The connections. The overlap, the influence. The give and take. This exciting and ground-breaking exhibition is a sign of innovative work both in artistic production, support for emerging artists and dynamic curation taking place at Galerie Deux Poissons and bodes well for future developments. Galerie Deux Poissons is a blessing for the artistic community of Montreal for its role in maintaining the importance of the Belgo Building as a Montreal landmark which has recently lost some important galleries.