SOPHIE CALLE
For the Last and First Time
5 February – 10 May 2015
“I went to Istanbul. I spoke to blind people, most of whom had lost their sight suddenly. I asked them to describe the last thing they saw.”
French artist Sophie Calle , one of the most important artists of her generation, makes her debut at the MAC with For the Last and First Time. The exhibition, which reveals great artistic sensibility, consists of two recent projects: The Last Image (2010), a series of photographs accompanied by texts, and Voir la mer (2011), a series of digital films.
These two bodies of work are in some way a continuation of a piece produced by Calle in 1986, titled The Blind. In that case, the artist asked blind people to describe beauty. One of them answered: “The most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen is the sea, an endless sea.” It was in Istanbul, years later, that Calle chose to pursue her poetic investigation of blindness, beauty and the sea. The installation, accompanied by the soothing sound of waves, first presents The Last Image, a series of photographs, tinged with melancholy, for which Calle asked people who had lost their sight suddenly to recall the last thing they saw. For Voir la mer, she managed to find residents of Istanbul – a city surrounded by water – who had never seen the sea. She filmed each of these captivating, memorable maritime encounters.
For the Last and First Time was organized by Josée Bélisle, curator of the Musée Collection.
SIMON STARLING
Metamorphology
5 February – 10 May 2015
Initially organised by the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Metamorphology is a museum survey of British conceptual artist Simon Starling, who won the Turner Prize in 2005.
The show includes Bird in Space 2004 (2004), a two-tonne steel plate that intertwines two moments in time: a controversy over a Brancusi sculpture in 1923 and the U.S. government’s increase in the tax on imported steel in 2004; The Long Ton (2009), two blocks of marble, one Italian, the other Chinese, suspended from the ceiling; and Flaga 1972-2000 (2002), a Fiat 126 hung on the wall. The installation Project for a Masquerade (Hiroshima) (2010-2011) features such disparate characters as James Bond, Henry Moore, Sir Anthony Blunt, Colonel Sanders and a Japanese Noh mask maker. Pictures for an Exhibition, a suite of thirty-six gelatin silver prints, exemplifies Starling’s two-pronged research, one historical and the other photographic. Prompted by two archival photographs, he tracked the various peregrinations of sculptures by Constantin Brancusi, from their presentation in a 1927 exhibition at the Arts Club of Chicago to the present day. Once he found them, he photographed them in their current locations: private collectors’ homes, museum vaults and exhibition spaces.
Starling explores the notion of recurrence from two main perspectives: the materials and tools of his trade, and the principles of cycle, circuit and circulation. A keen observer, he is interested in different transformative processes, most notably the conception of metamorphosis and the regenerative potential of art. His images, sculptures and installations are based on historical research that often centres around key modernist figures, such as Henry Moore, Constantin Brancusi and Marcel Duchamp.
The Montréal presentation of Simon Starling: Metamorphology was organized by Lesley Johnstone, curator at the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal.
ALLAN SEKULA & NOËL BURCH
The Forgotten Space
21 January – 15 March 2015
Finally, the public is invited to become reacquainted with the “forgotten space” through which nearly ninety percent of the world’s cargo passes: the sea, which we tend to overlook until some disaster strikes. In The Forgotten Space, American filmmakers Allan Sekula (1951 – 2013) and Noël Burch (b. 1932) examine the highly topical issue of maritime transportation by container, an American invention from the 1950s that continues to extend its domination all over the world, leaving in its wake numerous and sometimes painful consequences. “In a weightless world of electronic capital, where money seems transacted in the ether and profits are nanosecond calculations, it is easy to forget the toil of millions worldwide involved in the sea trade,” explains John Zeppetelli. This dense and fascinating feature-length film takes us on a voyage around the world – from Rotterdam to Hong Kong, Los Angeles to Bilbao and Guangdong province in China – via numerous interviews and commentaries that tell us about the “100,000 invisible ships and one and a half million invisible seafarers binding the world together through trade.”
The Forgotten Space was organized by Louise Simard, head of multimedia at the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal.
Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal
185 rue Sainte-Catherine Ouest,
Montréal, Québec, H2X 3X5
Canada
macm.org
Opening hours
Tuesday: 11h00 – 18h00
Wednesday – Friday: 11h00 – 21h00
Saturday – Sunday: 10h00 –18h00
Monday: Closed