Newsletter
EDITO
The Artistic Bling-Bling: From Flashy Accessory to Social Critique
Sylvette Babin
BLING-BLING
All Around Bling-bling: The Art of Humanity in Civilization’s Cultural Surplus
The Western model of civilization now governs all forms of humanity and organizes the world’s resources according to its needs and ideals. The “bling-bling” style, originally attributed to particular individuals and social groups, is now variegated across all the structures of art and life around us: in the real that artists are grappling with today, a cultural, commercial, materialist, and promotional surplus—that luxury trash—coexists with a global impoverishment of the Earth’s riches and forms of life.
Thibault Carles
All that Glitters Isn’t Gold: Kitsch, Bling-bling and Bullshit
The following essay explores the relationship between concepts of kitsch, bling-bling and bullshit in contemporary art. It forwards the hypothesis that bling-bling and other contemporary forms of bullshit and vapidity are to the postmodern what kitsch is to the modern: a nebulous space containing everything it would rather not admit.
Emily Falvey
Bling-bling, Everytime I Come Around
This text examines the genesis of bling-bling in hip-hop subculture and discusses contemporary art practices that either comment on the phenomenon or are characterized as bling-bling. Particular attention is given to the work of American artist Kehinde Wiley, the Canadian Simon Bilodeau, and Damien Hirst of the UK.
Fabien Loszach
African Ice: Avant Car Guard’s Bling-bling
This essay examines a paradox in the production of bling-bling in South Africa through a music video by Ludacris set in Durban and the work of art collective Avant Car Guard, William Kentridge and Simon Starling. Kentridge and Startling reveal the economic materiality of South Africa’s mining, conversely Ludacris uses South Africa to announce his power as a rapper, while Avant Car Guard’s critiques of Kentridge and others approach a political display that mirrors Ludacris’ use of bling. Ultimately in a nation whose economy is defined by mining, Avant Car Guard’s use of bling announcing their presence becomes a particularly apolitical gesture.
Andrew Hennlich
Cooke-Sasseville’s Golden Recipe
In their practice, Cooke-Sasseville parody the world of consumption and the relation between humans and commodities. Le petit gâteau d’or (“The Golden Cupcake”) addresses issues relating to the veneration of luxury, most notably in the elite culture in which art plays an important role. Although it resembles the now fashionable cupcakes one finds in sophisticated pastry shops, Cooke-Sasseville’s work is much like a jewel, as it is made from eighteen carat gold and precious stones. It is thereby made in the image of the art market in which ambitious speculators transform the value of artworks to the point of reaching astronomical prices. Cooke-Sasseville address such a state of affairs by means of caricature.
Marie-Ève Charron
PORTFOLIOS
Miguel Luciano
Agus Suwage
Dominique Sirois
ARTICLES
Program, Prostheses and Other Extensions
The author examines the uses of the prosthesis as an extension of the individual and its potential to develop and bring the underlying program to light. This observation draws on multidisciplinary art works presented in February 2009 in Québec City during the Mois Multi 10, organized by the Productions Recto-Verso.
Jocelyn Robert
elles@centrepompidou : Une nouvelle histoire ?
Partant des grandes expositions collectives récentes regroupant des femmes artistes, l’auteure commente elles@centrepompidou, qui présentait des artistes de sa collection. Elle interroge le choix des artistes et des thématiques dans le contexte où celui-ci cristallise une « une histoire de l’art des femmes au 20e siècle », sans toutefois véritablement remettre en cause les enjeux liés à la construction identitaire et à la fabrication même de l’histoire. Est-il espéré qu’une autre histoire se fonde sur le renouvellement de « canons » historiques ? Voilà l'une des questions fondamentales que le texte pose.
Thérèse St-Gelais
Paysage composté de Maryse Goudreau
Paysage composté est une exposition charnière pour Maryse Goudreau. L’artiste présente les résultats de sa recherche photographique des dernières années sur le paysage. Ses œuvres les plus récentes, réalisées exclusivement pour cette exposition, révèlent une transformation profonde de sa démarche à l’égard du territoire. L’artiste travaillant entre autres à partir de sa collection de photographies anciennes et concevant l’appareil-photo comme un territoire en soi, la photographie devient l’espace d’exploration premier, multipliant pour le spectateur les couches de lecture d’un monde en perte de mémoire.
Adrienne Luce
Still Life with Easter Everywhere
This is a review of Vancouver artist/filmmaker Jeremy Todd’s 2008 feature length video/digital film Easter Everywhere, which is currently distributed by Video Out Distribution, and has been screened at the Helen Pitt Gallery in Vancouver (2008) and Emily Carr University (2008). The film’s multilayered images and overloaded plot fragments allude to both the post-apocalyptic future and the failed utopian yearnings of the sixties. I argue that this work functions as a filmic still life, a memento mori for utopia, that relates to the rhetorically complex responses to material abundance that characterized seventeenth-century Dutch still-life painting.
Emily Rosamond
France-Algeria, Go-betweens
In a postcolonial and global context in which the recognition of the History and culture of immigrants is gradually being acknowledged, it is important to follow how contemporary art has taken up these questions. Whether they left their country in the 1990s or were born in France of immigrant parents, some artists of Algerian origin have chosen to use their works to reexamine their mixed cultures, their parents’ history, and the reality of being an immigrant in contemporary society. The article focuses on several of these works and the diversity of their formal and conceptual orientations.
Florence Jaillet
Marie-Claire Blais, la couleur éblouie
Regard sur la dernière série de dessins de Marie-Claire Blais. On voit comment ce travail tout en mesure et en géométrie nous convoque à une expérience affective. La lumière induite par un prisme imaginaire se dépose sur le papier, transmuée en pigments colorés. On tente aussi de comprendre comment ce travail, dans sa poïétique même, donne à voir les clés pour le lire. Finalement, on essaie de situer cette pratique en lien avec la tradition picturale.
Serge Murphy
AFFAIRE DE ZOUAVE
Bling-bang
Michel F. Côté
REVIEWS
Paris – Musée d’Art moderne de la Ville de Paris – Nathalie Desmet
Montréal – Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal – Vivian Ralickas
Montréal – Fonderie Darling – Vivian Ralickas
New York – MELA Foundation – Mathieu Beauséjour
Toronto – Justina M. Barnicke Gallery – Gabrielle Moser
Québec – Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec – Yann Pocreau
Toronto – MKG127 – Gabrielle Moser
Vancouver – Artspeak – Kathleen Ritter
PUBLICATIONS
Documentary Protocols. Protocoles documentaires. (1967-1975) – Galerie Leonard & Bina Ellen
Denis Lessard
Claudie Gagnon – Expression, centre d’exposition de Saint-Hyacinthe, L’Œil de Poisson et Musée d’art de Joliette
Katrie Chagnon
