Year End Art Exhibit Rush (Montreal) 1: Marie-Claude Pratte "La Marche Du Monde".
Well, I've seen a plethora of art exhibits this past week
in Montreal, paving my way through the Christmas rush.
Good news is there's a lot of good stuff.
I'll comment some of it in the next few posts.
.
I ended yesterday with Marie-Claude Pratte at Quartier Éphémère,
which was a real cherry on a sundae treat. Kinda like watching
a christmas mechanical window. The main piece is a full surrounding
wall fresque that functions like the paths on a board game,
depicting urban activity in downtown Montreal. You follow
from the start (Hydro-electric crash creating a flood, and cars getting off their suburbs homes unto the Jacques-Quartier bridge), and after wandering
in various streets of Montreal (Ste-Catherine, St-Laurent
Chinatown, etc..), you end either at the Casino, or a giant library called "University" (and presenting books sporting names of chain stores as
their titles), or an hospital (my guess is that it's Hôpital St-Luc).
Everybody is painted in black, and you start realizing that the
tone of the work spells "bleak". This is afterall, "punk" painting,
but I insist: this was not how I perceived it at first, since
the layering of colourful shops and bars reminded me more
of the carnivalesque atmosphere of late Friday night activity
on St-Laurent (especially in summer). I am not certain that the
artist chose the best streets in her intention to attack local
consumerism. Where is Ste-Catherine West or St-Hubert?. But
then I figure Pratte is linking St-Laurent as a pittoresque path
that will lead you to Marché Central (the spot in canada that makes
the most money by square foot). The work is transitive.
Pratte added another subversive element to this piece. She sells everything by square foot, meaning that she intends to cut the paint in parts amongsts the buyers. That saddens me: I think it should all stick together.
On the checklist, Pratte seems to separate the "suburb" and the "city"
portions of the work into two separate entities, but I think they consist of one.
I'm deciding for her what pieces should go together: apart from the cityscape fresque (which includes the flood series as provoking the transition between the natural and urban scapes), I counted 6 other groups of paintings. Two are about Jesus: the clouds vignettes leading to a dirty st-suaire, and the little church pointing to a canvas of Jesus being sick in bed. These and another allegorical tableau showing people living in a gigantic shoe under the sea are the weakest parts of the exhibit. They disrupt the general topic by focussing on other themes such as decadence of religion and ecology.
There is another large "fresque" consisting on a series of public buses leading people to a gigantic shop, from which they follow (by foot) a path that leads to a "death station", where they all align to pass trough a meat grinder that piles the fleshy residuals into a gigantic and surprisingly colorful depotoir. This quasi-abstract painting, adorned by a queen sitting on top, is a stand out. Snobs call this "naive painting", but I call it "heritage" painting. The sort of work that may end up at the McCord Museum, where it will make everyone go "wooo" when they finally get the chance to see it. The fragmented aesthetic recalls the ancient assyrian or egyptian wall reliefs that were often layered as a mean to lead into various narratives. The overall texture and sizes of the fragments also reminds of medieval icons. Maybe afterall this is Pratte's version of a Last Judgment, and there would lie the reasoning behind her choice to depict a religious scene.
The two last "ensembles" consisted of: 1) a tiny assemblage depicting some sort of dark explosion (? I didn't pay attention), and 2) the entrance work consisting of 3 parts: people attending an important concert, a huge parking lot with an impressive range of cars, and one painting of a gas pump. Arguably those are only fillers to the two main fresques, which pseudo-folk attire impose an ambitious scale (not the first exploit in dimension for Pratte) that makes me wonder if this isn't a landmark work in its genre. I don't recall seeing any painting recently that were both this huge, complex, and intricate. Maybe Monique Regimbald-Zeibeir's monument to Marguerite Bourgeoy, but it doesn't even slightly relate (Monique was more about concept and repetition, if you can figure 426 little canvas similar to the one shown here). Haven't seen any Ackerman mural recently either.
The final fun is that, though the street series don't exactly depict the St-Laurent shops in their right order (I wonder if it was all painted from vague memories), I can see the spot where I live behind one of these shops. Hey!! This work talks about me!! What more could I ask? I walk on these streets every day, though I never felt like being part of it like so many scenemakers seem to think they are. I'm the least pro-St-Laurent fellow around. I've known the place all my life but always felt like being the stranger around. I don't meet people I know at every corner. I think people who recognize me are discreet about it.
But I disgress.
If painting is going to be this good (I'll admit I'm very severe with paintings, as I'm wary of conventions), than I'll need to reconsider my definition of contemporary art, and pay a lot more attention to what the "traditional artists" are able to do (and if you don't see where I'm coming from with "tradition", please revisit the folk art section of McCord museum ).
Cheers,
Cedric Caspesyan
centiment@hotmail.com
Marie-Claude Pratte: "La Marche Du Monde"
Nobember 19 - December 19, 2004
Quartier Ephémère
745 Rue Ottawa
514-392-1554
in Montreal, paving my way through the Christmas rush.
Good news is there's a lot of good stuff.
I'll comment some of it in the next few posts.
.
I ended yesterday with Marie-Claude Pratte at Quartier Éphémère,
which was a real cherry on a sundae treat. Kinda like watching
a christmas mechanical window. The main piece is a full surrounding
wall fresque that functions like the paths on a board game,
depicting urban activity in downtown Montreal. You follow
from the start (Hydro-electric crash creating a flood, and cars getting off their suburbs homes unto the Jacques-Quartier bridge), and after wandering
in various streets of Montreal (Ste-Catherine, St-Laurent
Chinatown, etc..), you end either at the Casino, or a giant library called "University" (and presenting books sporting names of chain stores as
their titles), or an hospital (my guess is that it's Hôpital St-Luc).
Everybody is painted in black, and you start realizing that the
tone of the work spells "bleak". This is afterall, "punk" painting,
but I insist: this was not how I perceived it at first, since
the layering of colourful shops and bars reminded me more
of the carnivalesque atmosphere of late Friday night activity
on St-Laurent (especially in summer). I am not certain that the
artist chose the best streets in her intention to attack local
consumerism. Where is Ste-Catherine West or St-Hubert?. But
then I figure Pratte is linking St-Laurent as a pittoresque path
that will lead you to Marché Central (the spot in canada that makes
the most money by square foot). The work is transitive.
Pratte added another subversive element to this piece. She sells everything by square foot, meaning that she intends to cut the paint in parts amongsts the buyers. That saddens me: I think it should all stick together.
On the checklist, Pratte seems to separate the "suburb" and the "city"
portions of the work into two separate entities, but I think they consist of one.
I'm deciding for her what pieces should go together: apart from the cityscape fresque (which includes the flood series as provoking the transition between the natural and urban scapes), I counted 6 other groups of paintings. Two are about Jesus: the clouds vignettes leading to a dirty st-suaire, and the little church pointing to a canvas of Jesus being sick in bed. These and another allegorical tableau showing people living in a gigantic shoe under the sea are the weakest parts of the exhibit. They disrupt the general topic by focussing on other themes such as decadence of religion and ecology.
There is another large "fresque" consisting on a series of public buses leading people to a gigantic shop, from which they follow (by foot) a path that leads to a "death station", where they all align to pass trough a meat grinder that piles the fleshy residuals into a gigantic and surprisingly colorful depotoir. This quasi-abstract painting, adorned by a queen sitting on top, is a stand out. Snobs call this "naive painting", but I call it "heritage" painting. The sort of work that may end up at the McCord Museum, where it will make everyone go "wooo" when they finally get the chance to see it. The fragmented aesthetic recalls the ancient assyrian or egyptian wall reliefs that were often layered as a mean to lead into various narratives. The overall texture and sizes of the fragments also reminds of medieval icons. Maybe afterall this is Pratte's version of a Last Judgment, and there would lie the reasoning behind her choice to depict a religious scene.
The two last "ensembles" consisted of: 1) a tiny assemblage depicting some sort of dark explosion (? I didn't pay attention), and 2) the entrance work consisting of 3 parts: people attending an important concert, a huge parking lot with an impressive range of cars, and one painting of a gas pump. Arguably those are only fillers to the two main fresques, which pseudo-folk attire impose an ambitious scale (not the first exploit in dimension for Pratte) that makes me wonder if this isn't a landmark work in its genre. I don't recall seeing any painting recently that were both this huge, complex, and intricate. Maybe Monique Regimbald-Zeibeir's monument to Marguerite Bourgeoy, but it doesn't even slightly relate (Monique was more about concept and repetition, if you can figure 426 little canvas similar to the one shown here). Haven't seen any Ackerman mural recently either.
The final fun is that, though the street series don't exactly depict the St-Laurent shops in their right order (I wonder if it was all painted from vague memories), I can see the spot where I live behind one of these shops. Hey!! This work talks about me!! What more could I ask? I walk on these streets every day, though I never felt like being part of it like so many scenemakers seem to think they are. I'm the least pro-St-Laurent fellow around. I've known the place all my life but always felt like being the stranger around. I don't meet people I know at every corner. I think people who recognize me are discreet about it.
But I disgress.
If painting is going to be this good (I'll admit I'm very severe with paintings, as I'm wary of conventions), than I'll need to reconsider my definition of contemporary art, and pay a lot more attention to what the "traditional artists" are able to do (and if you don't see where I'm coming from with "tradition", please revisit the folk art section of McCord museum ).
Cheers,
Cedric Caspesyan
centiment@hotmail.com
Marie-Claude Pratte: "La Marche Du Monde"
Nobember 19 - December 19, 2004
Quartier Ephémère
745 Rue Ottawa
514-392-1554
posted by Cedric at 6:09 AM
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