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Mario Doucette?s La d?portation des Acadiens (d?apr?s Sir Frank Dicksee) ? filed in The Painting Project?s ?fictional worlds? division ? shows ghostly Acadians being rounded up by British soldiers.
Photograph by: Marc Grandmaison , Mario Doucette
MONTREAL - A snapshot of contemporary painting in Canada it may be, but The Painting Project was hardly put together as quickly or as casually as its subtitle implies.
The exhibition at Galerie de l?UQ?M is the result of a process that gallery director Louise D?ry launched in 2008 as an Internet museum project. Curator Julie B?lisle and Marie-Eve Beaupr?, her collaborator, were working on an online exhibition for the Virtual Museum of Canada (www.museevirtuel-virtualmuseum.ca) when, in 2011, the project became a gallery show.
Two years of research followed, with D?ry acting as ?coach? to make sure the selection process didn?t miss anything.
You will have to visit the gallery twice to see the exhibition, but it?s on now, with the organizers eyeing a launch of the web version in the fall. They split the gallery version into two parts to give the 60 paintings by 60 artists the space they need. Part 1 closes June 1; Part 2 opens June 7 and runs to July 6.
The Painting Project is an eclectic show, but the aim of D?ry and B?lisle was to sample the entire range of painting throughout Canada.
Some of the artists in the exhibition are well recognized and others barely known. They aren?t necessarily the best artists in the country, B?lisle said, but ?together they represent the whole. A different 60 could have been chosen.?
Two years of studio visits and research by B?lisle and Beaupr? included a street survey that showed most people to have some knowledge of art, and that ?painting represents something in the imagination of every citizen,? D?ry said.
But the survey also showed that most people know nothing about contemporary art. ? ?Let?s change that,? we said,? D?ry added.
Painting as a way to understand contemporary art in this era of new media, digital imagery, performance and installation?
?Painting has proved that it can survive in every register ? formal and conceptual, abstract and figurative,? D?ry writes in the 364-page catalogue, which includes images of two paintings by each of the 60 artists ? one of the painting in the exhibition, the other in the virtual museum.
The paintings are grouped not by the traditional divisions of portraiture, landscape, genre scenes and still life, but by four arbitrary ones that D?ry calls ?infinitely more fertile.?
Wanda Koop?s My Mother Lives on that Island (SEEWAY) could be an abstract painting, a landscape or a colour study. Instead it belongs with ?figures of reality,? defined by D?ry as figurative-based explorations of the visible world that build on any or all the traditions of painting.
Mario Doucette?s La d?portation des Acadiens (d?apr?s Sir Frank Dicksee) shows ghostly Acadians with halos being rounded up by British soldiers. It has been assigned to ?fictional worlds,? for its symbolic content and a style inspired by cartoons or illustration.
Christine Major?s Crash Theory II is also a ?fictional world? for its ambiguous but seemingly symbolic content and illustrative style. Two crashing cars are echoed by rough play between female roller derby skaters.
The ?painting as subject? works are mostly abstract and gestural, with the emphasis on the materiality of the painting medium. Paintings in ?hybrid practices? evolve from their contact with other disciplines, including sculpture, writing and photography.
Even if there is no common denominator in the exhibition beyond that the paintings were made recently in Canada, the gallery space creates opportunities for connections to be made between ways of seeing that are often thought inimical to each other, B?lisle writes.
?I like to compare the fictions of Kent Monkman and Cynthia Girard,? she writes. Monkman?s Miss Africa is an impeccably painted pastiche of stereotypes from history painting and celebrity magazines, while Girard?s I Had a Dream paints words on burlap in which she imagines the prime minister making love to her while whispering sweet thoughts like: ?Evolution is a lie.?
D?ry notes how painting is flourishing in the world of art fairs and biennials and how it is being embraced by the digital generation, but that surveys and books of contemporary Canadian painting are so rare that few painters have a clear idea of what is produced in other regions of the country.
That is what makes this exhibition and catalogue so important. As B?lisle noted about her studio visits, painters keep their art history books close at hand. The Painting Project is a resource that contributes to the solidarity of Canadian artists and informs them of the concerns of their fellows across the country.
Several events accompany the exhibition. The next is an hour-long discussion at 12:45 p.m. on May 16 in which Marie-Claude Bouthillier, Christine Major and Hugo Bergeron talk about the way they work and how painting is the basis of their art practice.
The Painting Project: A Snapshot of Painting in Canada, Part 1 continues until June 1 at Galerie de l?UQ?M, 1400 Berri St. Part 2 opens June 7 and continues until July 6. For more information, visit galerie.uqam.ca.
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Art auctions: AIDS Community Care Montreal holds ARTSIDA5 on Saturday, May 4,?starting at 5:30 p.m., at the Mus?e d?art contemporain. Sixty works of art ? including one by Kent Monkman, who is in the Painting Project exhibition ? will be auctioned. Sarah Neufeld of Arcade Fire is one of the performers; she will play works from her new solo project. For more information, visit artsida.org/gallery.
The ?comus?e du fier monde, 2050 Amherst St., holds a benefit art auction Tuesday, May 7?at 7 p.m. (cocktail and buffet at 5 p.m.), with 60 works by artists both well known and emerging. The art is now on display. For more information, visit ecomusee.qc.ca.
john.o.pohl@gmail.com
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Source: http://www.montrealgazette.com/entertainment/Painting+Project+unites+country/8334352/story.html
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