L’ACTIVITÉ/ OLIVIER CHOINIÈRE, JULIE FAVREAU, MARC-ANTOINE K. PHANEUF
Interprètes/Performers: Nicolas Cantin, Caroline Dubois, Anne Thériault, Sarah Wendt. Musique/Music: Marie Davidson.
The artist wishes to thank the Canada Council for the Arts.
May 5 – June 13, 2009
Curator: Robin Simpson with the collaboration of Maryse Larivière
Produced by the Leonard & Bina Ellen Art Gallery
Exhibition Opening
Saturday May 2, 4 – 6 pm
The Wrong Corpse is a possession, an interlope, a misattribution, an alibi, a middleman, a solecism, a diversion, an iconoclast. This exhibition brings together three artists who cast a critical, yet equally celebratory, light over the coming apart of identity under psychological, social, and political designs. Often performing a cultural intercession over the visual arts, design coerces culture into being defined by systematic refashionings of utility and novelty. Yet this imposition also results in the construction of an intermediary space where artists may propound a critical inquisition upon this notion of utility by abusing the cultural pressures that attempt to delimit our character in order to conjure, revive, and author new identities.
The Wrong Corpse is at first inanimate, a misplaced or redirected identity, yet never innocuous. It highlights the inadequacy of the identities so often assigned to us and reminds us of all that can be done upon the surface of things.
Julie Favreau‘s work takes as its base material discarded examples of domestic ornamentation. Culled from thrift stores, flea markets, and vacated estates they are distributed throughout a fragmented set of parlours. A bewitched set of narratives and temporalities are composed between the performers and the objects to a feverish climax, which roams about the tableaux.
Decoration of another sort concerns Marc-Antoine K. Phaneuf and his collection of trophies. Their formulaic engraved plaques present the name of their recipient and the reason for this distinction. The collection acts as an inventory of names, of affiliations, and singular achievements. Serving as a poetic device it maybe read as a chorus or simply as a list, and in either case as a testament of that “extra mile” once surpassed to gain a brief moment of repute.
Playing with the trope of an audio tour, a device common to both museums and tourist programs, L’ACTIVITÉ/Olivier Choinière leads the visitor out of the gallery and into a projected cultural utopia. Atop the daily motions and infrastructure of the gallery’s surrounding neighbourhood the audio track reveals a perpetual spectacle already underway. The work confronts the city’s present ambitions to establish itself as a cultural capital through a new urban plan. The audio tour submerges the visitor in the theatre of statecraft and asks to what point would they serve as a subject within it.
The Wrong Corpse is presented in conjunction with the OFF BNL MTL.
The Leonard & Bina Ellen Art Gallery’s contemporary exhibition program is supported by the Canada Council for the Arts.