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Past exhibitions at Art Mûr 2005 |
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The Canadiana Martyrdom Series
Text by Marie-Ève Beaupré
Saisissantes, les photographies de Diana Thorneycroft jugulent toute possible attitude romantique devant les symboles de la quintessence canadienne. Les lieux pittoresques du pays accueillent désormais les accessoires d'un théâtre des horreurs où les icônes d'une identité nationale sont pendues sur la place publique. Et l'apathie des témoins de la scène estomaque. Sous de funestes ciels percés de faisceaux de lumières dramatiques se déroulent des épisodes teintés d'humour noir où le corps est à la fois le sujet réfléchi et torturé. Les oeuvres regroupées sous The Canadiana Martyrdom Series métissent habilement les conventions du paysage, de la scène de genre et de la nature morte. Les maquettes conçues puis photographiées par Diana Thorneycroft se présentent comme autant d'énigmes à résoudre. Les détails de son imagerie angoissée déroutent le regardant qui, ambivalent, reconnaît les figurines ligotées et constate leurs mésaventures, à mille lieues des récits d'enfants. Alors que se produisent les autodafés, écartèlements, lapidations et crucifiements, l'auditoire composé d'effigies d'animaux nordiques, de gendarmes, de plaisanciers ou d'ouvriers semble impassible devant les châtiments des damnés. Évoquent-ils l'homme devant les spectacles quotidiens de violence? Les photographies de l'artiste reproduisent l'acte de l'exécution sous des allures plastiques et artificielles, mais la violence est-elle pour autant désamorcée? Dénonçant ainsi la popularisation du meurtre comme divertissement, ses scènes d'une inquiétante étrangeté présentent des niveaux de réalité perturbés, voire perturbants. Cette série que l'artiste canadienne poursuit depuis quelques années aborde les fondements moraux d'une des pratiques qui caractérisent les sociétés humaines, soit la vénération de ses morts. Ses variations sur un même thème, celui du martyre canadien, se nourrissent du paradoxe que l'homme entretient avec les corps désincarnés, cultivant pour eux à la fois une peur, une fascination et une dévotion. Inspirée des martyres du christianisme, de leurs barbares exécutions, Diana Thorneycroft réactualise l'acte de supplicier et ses diverses représentations. En torturant ainsi les symboles de l'identité nationale, de la culture et de l'industrie canadiennes, les mythes associés à la nature ne relèvent plus d'une imagerie patriotique et romantique mais deviennent les lieux d'exploration de troublants états psychiques. |
Diana Thorneycroft
Diana Thorneycroft
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Landscapes Opening reception: Thursday November 17 2005, 5 to 8 pm
“During this contemplation in depth, the subject also becomes conscious of his own intimate nature. It is rather a deepened perspective on the world and ourselves. It allows us to hold ourselves at a distance from the world. In the presence(...) you choose your vision; you can see the unmoving bottom or the current, the bank or infinity, just as you wish. You have the ambiguous right to see or not to see(...) (the image) contains the universe, a fragment of a dream contains an entire soul.”. - de Water and Dreams: An essay on the Imagination of Matter par Gaston Bachelard Dans sa nouvelle série intitulée Paysages / Landscapes, Peter Hill se garde de donner trop de pistes au spectateur le laissant ainsi à lui-même devant ces compositions picturales où toute figuration a été évacuée. Seul le titre nous indique de manière concrète l'angle sous lequel aborder les œuvres tout en créant un lien sensible entre les séries antérieures de Hill. Par sa pratique, Hill interroge la distinction entre paysage et environnement; l'un comme étendue extérieur, l'autre comme espace intime. Telle une invitation au voyage, ces œuvres ouvrent la porte à une expérience personnelle, intérieure, voire spirituelle; l'œuvre devient alors un territoire où chaos, vision, hasard et intuition se mêlent aux notions traditionnelles du paysage. Hill renvoie le spectateur à son propre paysage psychologique - son environnement intérieur - lequel tintera la lecture de l'œuvre d'une couleur singulière à chaque individu.
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Peter Hill |
The Scar Project Opening reception: Thursday November 17 2005, 5 to 8 pm
Text by Nadia Myre
Pick at the scab and what do you see? A story you love? A story you hate? story you are too afraid to share or one you can't stop talking about? Love the or hate them, our stories are wounds that have shaped and influenced our lives The scar project is about recognizing, naming and sharing them – listening, an in so doing bringing compassion and love to each other and ourselves Participants are invited to sew their 'scars', metaphorical or literal, onto piece of 10" square canvas and share the story of how they got hurt, by whom, o who they hurt and how. For those who prefer to write, or for those who wish t remain anonymous, writing implements will be made available (manual and/or mechanical). Each canvas will be identified and coded as to when it was made where, by whom, if there is an accompany text, whether the scar is emotional physical or spiritual, if it was intervened on and when (some will be painted a putting salve on a wound), etc Canvas, thread/cord and needles will be provided for however participants ar more than welcome to enrich the materials there by bringing something they ca leave behind. As the project evolves and travels to different communities thi site will grow to include pictures of the process, the people, the wounds, th stories, the comments, and the date and location of future events. |
Nadia Myre
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Me(n)tal perspectives October 8 to November 12, 2005
In the recent series Me(n)tal Perspectives, Jinny M. J. Yu emphasizes the accumulation of lines which references to the visual complexity of urban landscape. This architectural deconstruction recalls the work of Italian Futurists in the beginning of the 20th C. The Futurists, using a successive and layered playing of lines, deconstructed movements in order to express the dynamism of contemporary inventions such as cars and trains. Similarly, Jinny M. J. Yu’s work also revels itself in multiple plans, where smooth and geometric lines meet. In this series, Jinny M. J. Yu combines graphite drawing and oil painting on aluminum. This choice of material reinforces the formal relations to the themes explored in this work: urban landscape, anonymity, mass culture and nature transformed by man.
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Jinny Yu |
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CURIO (curious moments) October 8 to November 12, 2005
Juliana España Keller presents a body of work that stems from documentation of a performance in Park Mont-Royal last winter and surfaces from research gathered from the Internet that embodies an aspect of modern-day story telling and the impact of mass media in popular culture. Through often purposefully illogical, uncommon or even anti-social in behavior and in action, performance can reveal how ideas of social morality are maintained. Her work is driven by preoccupations concerning the way in which meaning is constructed and transmitted through language and the way in which hearing and gesture interact and define our relationships with one another and with the world beyond the perimeters of our own bodies. Juliana España Keller extends these concerns further by questioning the distinctions between individual and collective freedoms, and moral and sensual values today.
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Juliana España Keller
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LES JARDINS TATOUÉS June to October, 2005
Three urban spaces Location 1: Park located on the corner of Rosemont blv. and St-Hubert St Location 2: In Ville-Marie, Ste-Catherine East st., between Berger st. and St-Dominique st.
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Rosebud: The journey from Wilderness Camp to New Xanadu August 25 to October 1st, 2005
Text by David Hlynsky
Perhaps we have never lived in more confusing times. Information technology blends billions of human thoughts into a single, fluid, super mind generating myth and irony more rapidly than any individual can absorb. While we clutch desperately at romantic notions of Nature, our Culture moves in the opposite direction at the speed of light. "Nature", by virtue of the symbolic languages we use to constructs it, has always been anthropomorphic. Real Nature can only remain nameless. Life is a seamless texture of protoplasm dancing to a cacophony of sensations and pumped by the pulsating rhythms of stone and sun, water and gravity, carbon and oxygen. In an infinitely complex cosmos, each description becomes another error of omission... a paradise found and instantly lost through each telling. Our human camp is constructed of abstraction and symbol. Just to set up camp is to push the wilderness away. But where is "Culture" created? Certainly it is nurtured in the back-street studios of brilliant artists. Eccentric and edgy, these efforts tap the adrenaline of urban life. But theirs is not the primary influence on the texture of contemporary civilization. The more pervasive commercial culture is being created by MBA's in upscale bank towers. Their palette has a mathematical clarity. Aesthetic value is derived from the shrewd calculus of demographics and profitability. New Xanadu is not the realm of the avant garde, social critique, but rather a dynamic utopia where Darwinian competition produces enormous personal luxury and pleasure. New Xanadu's enterprise spills from the mountainous headwaters of our glass and steel skylines down through the consumerist flood planes of Suburbia to lap at the edge of the vanishing wilderness itself. Old growth forest cathedrals are replaced by shopping malls. Consumption is our new spirituality... and whether we agree with Xanadu's outcome or not, our living presence shapes its very power.
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David Hlynsky |
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Transcendent Sublime August 25 to October 1st, 2005
The new works in the series, The Transcendent Sublime, are a return to dramatic imagery. They depict night time landscapes with eerie shadowed trees and weirdly luminescent skies. Others show seascapes with impossibly swirling waters and darkening clouds. The photograph, Seascape Darkened, is a variation on the large photo mural recently installed in the new Concordia University Computor Science and Fine Arts building downtown. The giclée prints on watercolour paper record the intensity of the fabricated, painterly landscapes. Their medium format encourages a closer inspection, whereupon the viewer is drawn into an imaginary world.
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Holly King
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A Group of Seven : A Contemporary Look at the Canadian Landscape Lois Andison, Lucie Duval, Sylvie Fraser, Katharine Harvey, Francis LeBouthillier, Monique Mongeau, Renée Duval Until September 16, 2005
Canadian Ambassy in Washington, USA
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THE RESALE 3rd edition
From July 14 to August 20 2005
Art Mûr would like to invite you to the third edition of THE RESALE. The Resale gives you the opportunity to refresh your art collection by either selling artwork you own, or by acquiring new artwork from other collectors. At Art Mûr, you will find works of art that have sold out, or that are no longer on the market - an exclusive occasion not to be missed!
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Parameters of fear
July 7 to July 30 2005
An understanding of the "culture of fear" appears now to be of increasing importance. Humanity is far from convinced that things are getting better since 9/11, existing through a profound era of terrorism, environmental disaster and widening inequality. On a private level, our individual sense of well being within society is shifting and the fallout is threatening to the extent that there is no safe haven or place of refuge. This fear can be explored psychologically, as one of many emotional states, but there is also a macroscopic view, arguing for the existence of a distinctive 'culture of fear' in contemporary societies. This is a culture built on universal panic, irrational behaviour, extreme and groundless fear, paranoia in the absence of any actual threat. And as society flees in the face of fear, perhaps this flight also takes place on a mental level, both individually and collectively, witnessed in a corresponding change in attitudes, values and norms. The exhibition "Parameters of Fear" examines manifestations of fear both on a public and private level, and as captured in the popular imagination. The exhibition aims to serve as an inquiry into how some of the phenomena associated with fear are constituted and negotiated. This thematic exhibition premiered in Finland in October of 2004 in Muu Gallery in the heart of Helsinki. It is travelling to Montréal, Quebec in July 2005. The exhibition opens on Thursday, July 7 th, 2005 and ends July 30 th, 2005 . The opening reception is on Thursday, July 7 th from 3 p.m. to 8 p.m. respectively. Project Co-ordinator in Montreal: Juliana España Keller
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De nature hollandaise/ Dutch Nature Kitty Baker, Robbie Cornelissen, Leslie Kamps, Greg Que, Ans Schuiling, Eric Setz, Betty Simonides, Wia Stegemen
May 7 to June 18, 2005
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Peinture Fraîche
Art Mûr, in collaboration with the department of painting and drawing of Concordia University, has selected artworks from 10 promising students.
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David Arseneau |
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