In this exhibition the painter Pierre Dorion examines the relationship between the artist and the wall as a flat, pictorial or sculptural surface or, rather, as a conceptual reference, a site for questioning, or as material that informs the imaginary. Invited artists invest the walls of the gallery by intervening directly on them either pictorially, as is the case with Neil Campbell, Louise Lawler, Barry Allikas and Wanda Koop or sculpturally by developing an ensemble that projects into space, in the case of Alexandre David. A monochrome by Claude Tousignant hovers between the two categories. Another artist, Michael Merrill, graphically deconstructs the gallery’s space in a series of drawings while Guy Pellerin deploys his pictorial intervention in an area where the public space of the atrium meets the white cube of the gallery. Documentary photographs by Gabor Szilasi depict Betty Goodwin’s Mentana Street Project of 1979, in which she transformed an apartment by marking its wall surfaces and creating a structure of corridors. Through and beyond these various manners of working off the wall various issues arise concerning the representation of the exhibition site and its context, the residual presence of both abstract painting and Minimalism, a particular history of painting and of installation in Montreal, and, indeed, a global political consciousness.

The Leonard & Bina Ellen Art Gallery’s contemporary exhibition program is supported by the Canada Council for the Arts.