Montreal - Abstract Prints

Titled after an episode of Star Trek, The Paradise Syndrome features new work by Sonny Assu. Combining Indigenous content with appropriated images and text from marine chart...

Titled after an episode of Star Trek, The Paradise Syndrome features new work by Sonny Assu. Combining Indigenous content with appropriated images and text from marine chart maps, covers from Choose Your Own Adventure gamebooks, and science fiction television programs, this exhibition continues Assu’s exploration around the intersection of Indigenous Peoples and North American pop culture. In the Star Trek episode The Paradise Syndrome, Captain Kirk suffers from amnesia when he arrives on an alien planet, which is inhabited by a society of people who resemble Indigenous Peoples in North America. Kirk is found by a group of women who believe that he is a god and then take him back to their community. At the end of the episode, he is attacked when they realize he is not a god. Spock and McCoy are transported to his rescue, but in the midst of the conflict, a tribal priestess who Kirk developed a relationship with, is killed. In this exhibition, Assu presents two series of digitally altered prints inspired by fact and fiction. The first series depicts ovoids superimposed onto digital scans of paintings by Emily Carr and A.Y. Jackson, framed by gamebook covers. The prints feature alien forms descending, referencing a Star Trek: Voyager episode titled Tattoo. In this episode, Chakotay meets the Sky Spirits, aliens who visited Earth thousands of years ago. They met nomadic humans who had great respect for the land and other animals. The Sky Spirits were so impressed that they gifted the nomads with an inheritance that would allow them to thrive and protect their world. When the Sky Spirits returned thousands of years later, they found that the weapons and diseases of invaders from other lands had decimated the nomadic ‘Inheritors’. Chakotay’s tattoo was the mark of an Inheritor and signaled to the Sky Spirits that some of the Inheritors had survived. Assu’s gamebook prints expand on this fictional story, incorporating aspects of our colonial history in the Pacific Northwest. This exhibition is a playful investigation of challenging issues. By incorporating nostalgic gamebooks from the 1980s, Assu alludes to the discovery of his Kwawaka’wakw heritage, which has recently led him back to living in his ancestral land. The second series of Assu’s prints in this exhibition depict digital illustrations, inspired by Indigenous copper shield symbols, that are superimposed onto navigational marine maps...

It is the luminous colours of Michel Piquette’s works that first catch the eye. His chromatic circles that stir up vision take root in an aesthetic tradition a few decades old alread...

Going North in the Work of Jessica Houston By L. Sasha Gora Jessica Houston’s most recent works look north. What is north? Where is it? Is it a fixed place, or something else? He...

Going North in the Work of Jessica Houston By L. Sasha Gora Jessica Houston’s most recent works look north. What is north? Where is it? Is it a fixed place, or something else? He...

Going North in the Work of Jessica Houston By L. Sasha Gora Jessica Houston’s most recent works look north. What is north? Where is it? Is it a fixed place, or something else? Her second solo show at Art Mûr brings together paintings, a sound sculpture, and chine collé prints, all of which reveal a fragile, fluid, and often fractured, north. An iron ore stone becomes a speaker, playing recordings of interviews and singing, and expanding the physical presence of the stone. The exaggerated textures of the paintings give them, too, a sculptural and documentary feel. They record how actions—breaking and piercing, pushing and pulling—disrupt and transform the paintings’ surfaces. By resembling patterns one finds in the wild—scratches across the surface of a rock, uneven waves that form on melting snow—they unhinge any clear distinction between what is natural and what is made. Made with a printmaking technique that binds together distinct papers, the chine collé prints begin with photographs Houston took of Baffin Island. She then combines the images with coloured paper, creating traces of the process of extracting and replacing parts of a scene, and an equal awareness of both what is present and absent. Some are composed of double circles, like looking through binoculars. In Business As Usual, a decaying interior—peeling wallpaper...

Going North in the Work of Jessica Houston By L. Sasha Gora Jessica Houston’s most recent works look north. What is north? Where is it? Is it a fixed place, or something else? He...

Going North in the Work of Jessica Houston By L. Sasha Gora Jessica Houston’s most recent works look north. What is north? Where is it? Is it a fixed place, or something else? He...

Going North in the Work of Jessica Houston By L. Sasha Gora Jessica Houston’s most recent works look north. What is north? Where is it? Is it a fixed place, or something else? Her second solo show at Art Mûr brings together paintings, a sound sculpture, and chine collé prints, all of which reveal a fragile, fluid, and often fractured, north. An iron ore stone becomes a speaker, playing recordings of interviews and singing, and expanding the physical presence of the stone. The exaggerated textures of the paintings give them, too, a sculptural and documentary feel. They record how actions—breaking and piercing, pushing and pulling—disrupt and transform the paintings’ surfaces. By resembling patterns one finds in the wild—scratches across the surface of a rock, uneven waves that form on melting snow—they unhinge any clear distinction between what is natural and what is made. Made with a printmaking technique that binds together distinct papers, the chine collé prints begin with photographs Houston took of Baffin Island. She then combines the images with coloured paper, creating traces of the process of extracting and replacing parts of a scene, and an equal awareness of both what is present and absent. Some are composed of double circles, like looking through binoculars. In Business As Usual, a decaying interior—peeling wallpaper...

Nestled between artistic innovation and scientific discovery, Laurent Lamarche’s work explores the boundaries between art and science, nature and artifice, and fact and fiction. Lama...

Text by Anaïs Castro It is the luminous colours of Michel Piquette’s works that first catch the eye. His chromatic circles that stir up vision take...

Text by Anaïs Castro It is the luminous colours of Michel Piquette’s works that first catch the eye. His chromatic circles that stir up vision take...

Jean-Paul Riopelle, 1923-2002, Canadian Le Clocher, 1989 Lithograph on Japan paper 22.4 x 30.3 in signed and numbered in pencil Catalogue raisonné reference: Y. Riopelle n° Yseult Ri...

Jean-Paul Riopelle, 1923-2002, Canadian Auprès de mon lac n6 1985 Lithograph on Japan paper 20 ½ x 26 ¾ in 52 x 68 cm Signed and numbered in pencil (edition of 75) Catalogue raisonn...