Olympian and
Expo exploits
PYRAMID SCHEME: Durand’s Olympic VillageAnyone intent on studying Modernist architecture is guaranteed to come across the trailblazing achievements of key figures like Le Corbusier and Mies van der Rohe. But what about the NDG-bred homeboy responsible for Expo 67’s Quebec Pavilion and those two towering pyramids known as Montreal’s Olympic Village?
Prolific Quebec architect Luc Durand is finally getting his due with the first major retrospective of his work at the Notre-Dame-de-Grâce Maison de la Culture (3755 Botrel) until June 21. Curator Étienne Desrosiers has assembled photos, sculptures, watercolours and models that span 60 years of Durand’s eclectic international career. From university in Geneva, to audacious constructions in a rapidly modernizing ’60s India, to painting and sketches that point to Durand’s lifelong passion for the visual arts. Durand’s artistic boom on home turf as well as his ongoing proposal to cover that colossal blemish that is the Décarie Expressway are also on view.
The architect’s inspiration takes on multiple applications, and the exhibit also features his forays into furniture and rug design in New Delhi, with their distinctly post-war, abstract art inclinations. This showcase puts to rest any doubt over the 80-year-old’s contributions to Modern Canadian architecture.
by MICHAEL-OLIVER HARDING
36 dramatic
situations reborn
REVOLVING DRAMA: Les 36
Way back when, French dramatist Georges Polti developed the idea that, for any situation on stage, 36 possibilities exist, and gave his list the unsurprising title The Thirty-Six Dramatic Situations.
Young Quebec company l’Incorruptible Théâtre puts theory into practice with Les 36 at Théâtre la Chapelle (3700 St-Dominique) promising to give audiences “the complete range of human emotion in one show.”
Thirty-six playwrights, 36 scenes and 36 little universes overlap, ranging from high drama to ridiculous comedy. “It’s a project we’ve been working on for two and a half years,” says company co-founder and director Catherine Vallée-Grégoire. “We asked 36 Quebec writers, both emerging and well-known, to each take one of the themes—things like “Conflict with a god,” “An enemy loved” or “Adultery”—and write a five-minute piece.
“I put them in an order I thought made sense,” she says. “There’s lots of recurring characters and actors who cross from one segment to the next. From the feedback we’ve been getting so far, people seem to like it a lot.”
Part A and Part B run on alternate nights, or for real theatre nuts, there’s a complete four hour version on April 11.
by NEIL BOYCE
Anywhere landscapes
They say a good writer can tell a story in fewer words, and though he’s not a writer, photographer Tomasz Szadkowski does just that in his solo show Late Landscape at the Galerie Trois Points (372 Ste-Catherine W., #520) until April 25.
 Made up of only a handful of images with varying subjects, it’s the ambiguous connection between the photos that creates the narrative. Part of what he’s exploring with these photographs is “different types of mental imprints”—how those imprints are made and left on different levels of our memory and how they affect our perception of the world.
Born in Poland, Szadkowski moved to Canada almost 10 years ago and studied photography at Concordia. Though none of the photos in the exhibit give away the location, you get the impression that they were taken in Poland, or Eastern Europe (a delicious plate of perogies features in one image), but they just as easily could’ve been taken anywhere. It’s the viewer who sets the course.
by SACHA JACKSON
Hooked on poetry
For Katia Grubisic, the task of running the Atwater Poetry Project at Atwater Library (1200 Atwater) has perks particular to a poetry fan. “One benefit of being the coordinator is getting to hear the people you’ve been reading on the page,” says Grubisic. Next Thursday, April 16, at 7 p.m., the Project features  Jan Conn, Carolyn Smart, Barry Dempster and Sue Sinclair—four touring poets recently published by Brick Books.
Smart’s latest is Hooked. It’s seven long poems, dramatic monologues in the voices of seven women. “I was invited to be part of a performance poetry event, and decided to write something more performance-oriented,” Smart explains. “The first poem I wrote is about Myra Hindley, who was a murderer. She was sort of the boogie man in my mind when I was a child in England.”
The other six powerful and obsessed characters she explores include Zelda Fitzgerald, Carson McCullers, Jane Bowles and Elizabeth Smart. Free.
by VINCENT TINGUELY
Is it art?
WEAR YOUR SCARS: If you didn’t think having a scar was reminder enough that your body had been through something traumatic, now you can have a matching piece of jewellery.
 It’s My Scar is a new company that wants to help you “claim your past and wear your story.” Started by a woman whose neck was scarred due to an operation on her thyroid, she came up with the idea in the hopes that the pieces will help the wearer find strength in what was once painful.
Each piece is unique and created by an artist who turns a photograph of the scar into a wax mould, which is then cast in a material of the clients choosing to become a ring, a bracelet, a necklace etc. Morbid but interesting.
Itsmyscar.com
Arts
hole
DANCE TO THE END: Endings, the latest multimedia work by choreographer Zoja Smutny, is at Studio 303 (372 Ste-Catherine W. #303) this weekend, April 10 and 11 at 8 p.m. • AUSSIES INVADE THE CIRCUS: Australian performance troupe C!RCA are in town to take over the Tohu (2345 Jarry E.) with their latest show By the Light of Stars That Are No Longer..., which mixes acrobatics, trapeze, tumbling and the old cheerleading standard, tossing-the-girl. The show runs from Wednesday, April 15–19, and tickets range from $15–$25.
Artistat
The percentage size of a scale representation of the SKOL gallery space (372 Ste-Catherine W., #314) by artist Sylvain Bauman in his latest exhibit [AIR PLAIN 2], in which he proposes to recreate the gallery within the gallery: 80 per cent |
