Rafael Lozano-Hemmer “Intersection articulée. Architecture relationnell #18” (2011)
site specific installation view at Place des Festivals. Photo © M-KOS
The Quebec Triennial kicks off its 2nd edition today and runs through 3 January 2012, after a watertight hush over their final line up of artists. Tantalising people’s curiosity until the last minute, the Triennial finally opened itself to public view, filling every show room of the Musée d’Art Contemporain de Montréal with Québécois art. “The Work Ahead of Us†guides this edition with an underlying thread borrowed from Grier Edmundson’s exhibition, who himself borrowed from Russian Constructivist Vladimir Tatlin, in a 1920. Curators Marie Fraser, Lesley Johnstone, Francois LeTourneux, Mark Lancôt and Louise Simard joined forces to select over 50 artists living and working in the province of Quebec. Inaugurating the grand opening celebration tonight, media artist Rafael Lozano-Hemmer illuminated the heavens above the MACM with a network of interactive blue skylights, manipulated from lever pods situated on Place des Festivals.
Every curator brought a personalized touch to the “Work ahead of us†leitmotif, making the triennial into a polymorphic mix of vision. Head curator Marie Fraser pondered on the performative dimension of art and its interaction with the practical world, by choosing artists who work specifically in the materiality of media, image, sound, time and space. Lesley Johnstone examined artists who reinvest the exhibition space as a site for works-in-progress, where anything can happen. Mark Lancôt looked into contemporary practices that explore the connections between modernity and collective memory. Francois LeTourneux identified a series of strategies within abstract and iconographic works that will ramify meaning into polysemic nuance, while still exercising restraint. And finally Louise Simard has focused on the cross-disciplinary nature of live performance, a sub-genre with a growing number of adepts. Providing for the exhibition’s afterlife, the Triennial has also published a 500-page catalogue, in collaboration with ‘Esse’ magazine
Jacynthe Carrier “Rites” (2020-11) video still. Courtesy of the artist and MACM
List of artists:
2boys.tv, Numa Amun, Jean-Pierre Aubé, Magali Babin, Dean Baldwin, Steve Bates, Lorna Bauer, Sylvain Baumann & Florine Leoni, Mathieu Beauséjour, Sophie Bélair Clément, Matthew Biederman, Olivia Boudreau, Jacynthe Carrier, Marie-Andrée Cormier, Sylvie Cotton, Alexandre David, Jessica Eaton, Grier Edmundson, Julie Favreau, Claudie Gagnon, Massimo Guerrera, Tim Hecker, Nelson Henricks, Jim Holyoad & Matt Shane, Mark Igloliorte, Chris Kline, Thomas Kneubühler, Valérie Koakis, Stephane La Rue, Fabienne Lasserre, Mathieu Latulippe, Frédéric Lavoie,, François Lemiueux, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, Lynne Marsh, Thérèse Mastroiacovo, jake moore, François Morelli, L’orchestre d’hommes-orchestres, Dominique Pétrin & Georges Rebboh, PME-ART, Séripop, Charles Stankievech, Justin Stephens, Martin Tétreault, [The User], Ève K. Tremblay, Myriam Yates
The 2nd edition of Québec Triennial 2011
7 October 2011 – 3 January 2012
at Musée d’Art Contemporain de Montréal
185 Sainte-Catherine Ouest
Montréal, Québec
H2X 3X5
www.macm.org