Epic, outstanding
and creepy

Mapping the year in art from horror to delight

HUNTING AND GATHERING:
Vitaly Medvedovsky’s “The Forest”

by STACEY DEWOLFE

Though there is no one show that stands out as the year’s best, there were moments of great beauty, wonder, humour and inspiration.

For me, it began in March with Re-enactments at DHC/Art. From Paul Pfeiffer’s humorous and disturbing reinterpretation of Michael Jackson’s televised confession in “Live From Neverland,” to the little red-haired girl fielding questions of philosophical import in Kerry Tribe’s lovely split-screen, “Here and Elsewhere,” I was taken on a journey from horror to delight.

Over at Articule, Nelson Hendrick’s Map of the City made manifest his idea of the city as a syncopated “accumulation of gestures and desires,” while months later, during the Québéc Triennial at the MAC, Bettina Hoffman’s “Emile” mapped out an entirely different horizon, her camera moving languorously over the prone bodies of teenagers too lost in their ennui to notice the city pulsing outside the bedroom door.

TRIENNIAL AND PUSH
As it was with many of the big exhibitions, the inaugural Triennial was as hit and miss as a show of this scope is likely to be—its parts great than its sum. One of my favourites was a series of Escher-esque paintings by Etienne Zack whose canvasses could barely contain their subject matter. Later in the summer, I discovered the work of Vitaly Medvedovsky whose charmingly surreal narratives were exhibited first in Fresh Paint at Art Mûr, and later, at Galerie Push.

A new arrival on the Mile-End art scene, Push has shown a commitment to young painters, with two strong shows featuring works by emerging artists such as Montreal’s Jon Claytor and Nancy Bourassa, and Toronto’s Robyn Cumming and Kris Knight.

Knight’s work, a series of portraits wherein realism is ever so slightly called into question, reminded me of Emily Bennett Beck’s In Reverie at Articule in October. Beck’s paintings speak to our fascination with women in the public eye, pushing her images just past the point of realism so that we can see them anew.

SOPHIE CALLE, KIT MALO AND BREE,REE
The idea of seeing something through new eyes also resonated in one of the summer’s other big shows, Sophie Calle’s Take Care of Yourself at DHC/Art. Calle, who in person is much less controversial than her work suggests, created an epic investigation into the ways that the heart comes to terms with the loss of love. And though the show overwhelms at times, the individual pieces—in which 107 women respond to the devastating break-up e-mail Calle had received a few years earlier—convey the full gamut of emotions from frustration to vindication to exhilaration.

2008 was also a good year for drawing with two multiple-hat-wearing locals leading the charge. Kit Malo, an artist whose The Art of Getting Along ran in October at Emporium Gallery, was also co-curator (with Julien Ceccaldi) of this year’s Art Pop, which featured, among other things, a live drawing extravaganza.

Todd Stewart, aka Bree,ree, whose rock posters grace the street poles of our fair city, also branched out with a fantastic show of new prints at General 54 in September, and as a member of the Man Drawing Salon (with Vasilios Mavreas and Joe Ollman) who introduced their latest collaborations at Monastiraki in August.

THE DEVIL AND THE SANCHEZ BROTHERS
In the realm of photography, there were several outstanding individual works including: Scott King’s “Futurama,” a triptych of Joy Division’s Ian Curtis captured in mid-performance in the MAC’s Sympathy for the Devil, and the Sanchez Brothers’s extremely creepy and fascinating portrait of Jean-Marc Barr at the Triennial. I was also quite taken with Janieta Eyre’s equally creepy and compelling In the Scream of Things and Diana Thorneycroft’s playfully clever Group of Seven Awkward Moments at Art Mûr.

Montreal was also awash in rock and roll this fall with the aforementioned Sympathy for the Devil, which was at its best in the gallery devoted to 1970’s New York. Here, one could be amused by Christian Marclay’s “Body Mix,” in which full-length portraits were constructed out of record sleeves, and compelled by Warhol’s “Screen Tests” for the Velvet Underground, while nearby, his “Plastic Exploding Inevitable” provided the perfect aural backdrop. Warhol was also the focus of the MMFA’s Warhol Live, which explored the intersection of art, music and dance.

The last big show of the season was Christian Marclay’s Replay at DHC-Art. Here, the star of the show was “Video Quartet,” a four-channel video with an incredible soundtrack assembled from the hundred of clips used to create the piece. Luckily, the show is running through the holidays, so there is plenty of time to check it out.