EDITO
Waste: Inspiration or Expiation?
Sylvette Babin
WASTE
Waste and Ontology
This article attempts to delineate some of the many fields in which the notion of waste plays out. Waste, an exemplary dialectical object, is the locus of contrary forces. In it, there comes into play not only the object’s becoming, but also its very meaning. As such, along with its value, its very being is affected. In the visual arts, not only does this loss of degree touch the essence of a particular work, it instigates a “devaluation” of the very notion of the Work of Art as universal essence.
Brice Jubelin
Ground Zero: The Domestication of Remains or the Power of Disposal
In exploring a certain economy of remainders, this article analyzes the reconstruction undertaken at the World Trade Centre site—material vestiges that still bear witness to the Ground Zero events and, more directly, remainders that we choose to discard or rediscover, preserve or hide, as well as the vertiginous proliferation of remainders in the forms, languages, and technologies of a contemporary culture exposed to (then removed from) danger. As a photographic background, another site, the Mbeubeuss garbage dump in the Dakar suburbs, reminds us that the power of disposal constitutes the law of the house.
Louise Lachapelle
El Anatsui: From the Garbage Bins of Nsukka to International Museums
Between localized reality and international stakes, the issue of waste stands at the centre of El Anatsui’s work. Of Ghanaian extraction yet living in Nigeria, he has made the notion of recuperation (be it dead wood, bottle caps, food packaging, or metal plates) the fulcrum of his creative process. Charged with the memory of the society that has produced it, waste brings together multiple referential strata. Furthermore, it inscribes his works simultaneously within the tradition of modern art and within the cultural, political, and social contexts of Africa, without producing a stereotypical representation of the latter. Anatsui thus undertakes a poetic transfiguration of refuse in his magnificent “sculptural canvases.”
Éloïse Guénard
Reconfiguring Found Footage Film
[Richard Kerr, Karl Lemieux, Arthur Lipsett & Caroline Martel]
Pierre Rannou
The Ruins of a Day: The Disposable Art of Koo Jeong-A
With their cookie crumbs, aspirin-capsule powder, and wrapping papers littering the floor, Koo Jeong-A’s installations can be situated along the lines of an aesthetic recycling of objects analogous to that practiced by the artistic avant-garde since the beginning of the twentieth century. One subtle difference distinguishes the Korean artist’s work, however; the use of waste does not lead to its durability. In a manner similar to a deferment of time, the installation’s conservation of garbage is only temporary. Soon thereafter the debris disappears, taking with it the work of art.
Vanessa Morisset
The Perishable Papers of Pierre Pilonchéry
In his publicitages (advertisings), Pierre Pilonchery presents a veritable visual recycling of mass-distributed promotional fliers. These images, the waste products of our consumer society, are partially cut up into strips, then weaved together to create vast surfaces that the artist manipulates, posts up, suspends, crumples, and stages. Contingent on their presentation sites, these canevassages (weavings) assume variable meanings; for instance, in adorning the hallways of a department store they create a “return to sender” effect. Without resisting the laws of nature, without seeking to create relics, and bearing fully the precariousness of perishable paper’s fragile surfaces, Pilonchery appropriates fragments of reality to manufacture his work.
Florence Jaillet
PORTFOLIOS
BGL : Le Manège
Éric Cardinal : Floraisons
Andrew Chartier : Le dioxygraphe et pH GOOSE & pH DUCK
Isabelle Hayeur : Quaternaire IV
Louis Joncas : Detritus
Blue Republic : Nostalgia for the Present
Kelly Wood : The Continuous Garbage Project (1998-2003)
ARTICLES
Narration, installation et peinture : un ménage à trois chez Éric Lamontagne
La pratique artistique d’Éric Lamontagne se révèle beaucoup plus complexe que ne le laisse penser son côté ludique. Revisitant le potentiel narratif de la peinture à travers les redoublements que permet la citation ou les déambulations qu’occasionne l’installation, l’artiste s’approprie l’histoire de la tradition picturale afin de contribuer à faire apparaître l’artificialité de sa linéarité. Proposant au spectateur un rôle d’acteur, il modifie le statut de l’œuvre d’art qui, par son caractère inclusif, devient plurielle, chaque spectateur-acteur lui donnant un peu de sa personnalité.
Anne-Marie St-Jean Aubre
[in French]
Rafael Sottolichio : quand la peinture s’hybride
Le peintre Rafael Sottolichio s’intéresse aux formes d’hybridation possibles entre la peinture et la photographie. Dans la pratique de cet artiste, la logique de reproduction du réel se confronte à la matière, au geste de peindre. Par une reproduction fidèle d’images photographiques, il y a surtout une volonté de créer de nouveaux rapports à l’image. En utilisant la facture photographique comme tactique de représentation, l’artiste poursuit un questionnement sur le rôle des images aujourd’hui.
Manon Tourigny
[in French]
concours Jeunes critiques
Saisir la ville
Catherine Barnabé
[in French]
AFFAIRE DE ZOUAVE
Barattage chocolat
Michel F. Côté
[in French]
PUBLICATIONS
Une saison chez Guy Borremans
Cynismes?? Manif d’art 3 [La biennale de Québec]
Persistance [Mathieu Beauséjour]
Michel Goulet, sculpteur
EXHIBITIONS
Float/Fly, InterAccess Electronic Media Arts Centre [Niknaz Tavakolian]
Not Quite How I Remember It, The Power Plant [Collective exhibition]
6* ÉMISSAIRES, Centre VU [Collective exhibition]
Holly Ward in Idyll: Three Exhibitions, Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery
One Time, Lawrence Eng [Kelly Mark]
Eden, Galerie Art Mûr [Nicolas Grenier]
Retracer la peinture, Galerie de l’UQAM [Stéphane La Rue]
Geoffrey Farmer, Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal
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