Exposed relations
COUPLING COUPLE: “Porphyria”As any married couple can attest, making a relationship work in the long term requires an enormous amount of patience and understanding. But what happens when things start to go astray? How do you right the balance when a life partnership begins to sour?
The videos and photographs of husband and wife collaborators Nicholas and Sheila Pye, which are on display in Vanitas at Art Mûr (5826 St-Hubert) until the end of August, investigate these questions. And the answers are not always pretty.
Using themselves as subjects—which seems incredibly brave considering they are physically and emotionally exposed—the couple’s work explores an array of themes: love and loss, dependency and decay, death and rebirth. Comprised of still-lifes, portraiture and staged events, the images resonate with the suffering of an intimate relationship in decline. Yet there is hope.
One of my favourite images is “Porphyria.” Here we see the couple, naked and spooning on the branch-strewn floor of an empty room. That this room once held the marital bed—a bed that we have seen, abandoned and forgotten, in previous images—speaks to the theme of renewal, and to the importance of accepting change for its positive, transformative powers.
by STACEY DEWOLFE
High concept fashion
AN AVANT-GARDE AFFAIR: Works by Matos (l) and Ly
A year ago Andrew Ly and Melissa Matos started thinking about the concepts and ideas that would eventually become Fantasme, a high concept fashion show and event to showcase their conceptual, avant-garde work.
The event, which takes place tonight, Thursday, Aug. 20 at 8:30 p.m., at the Darling Foundry (745 Ottawa), is a way for Ly and Matos, a fashion designer and jewellery designer, respectively, a chance to show their stuff—but that’s not all. “It’s really a celebration,” says Matos. “We’re starting to get noticed for our work and it’s awesome to be so appreciated. It reminds you that everybody can do it, if you have the talent and the hustle.”
Though they have their own individual visions, they share much of the same aesthetics and ideas. Differences are present, however, in the short films that will be screening. Ly’s was a collaborative effort with director Kevin Calero and dancer Gilles Polet. “We wanted to see the garments and the aesthetic come to life in the movement, so we came up with a story, an idea and a creature,” says Ly.
“With Andrew’s film all of your senses will be stimulated,” Matos says. “I work more conceptually, it’s about this idea of action and consequences.”
by SACHA JACKSON
Silk screening for everyone!
Bellicose democratism is not the first thing that comes to mind when I think of serigraphy. But here Dominique Pétrin offers up a battle cry to a different tune: “Silk screening is not for the bourgeois! It is for everyone!” she writes.
Pétrin’s upcoming installation Panthéon Pétro, on view Aug. 21 through Sept. 20  at the feminists-R-us La Centrale Galerie Powerhouse (4296 St-Laurent), plays off the chaos of the post-modern world, voicing Pétrin’s anger at the “loss of our natural instincts and the numbing of our senses.” Although she has collaborated with French art superstar Sophie Calle, this off-the-wall Montreal artist is best known under her alter ego Poney P, the lead singer of the semi-Dadaist art-punk band Les Georges Leningrad, which set out to offend everyone in 1999 and gained a lot of fans along the way before calling it quits in 2007.
Well versed in whacked-out theatrics from her tenure with Les Georges, Pétrin’s exhibition is quite the cloak-and-dagger event—it’s safe to say that one can expect nearly anything. Her vernissage takes place Friday, Aug 21 at 7 p.m.; an artist’s talk will happen Saturday, Aug. 22 at 3 p.m.
by DAVID LEVITZ
Piss-takes but no piss smell
A Montreal boy who made good in New York City, actor-comedian Robert Keller returns to town with friends in a thing called The Manhattan Comedy Project. It’s tag line? “The best in New York City comedy, brought right to you without the giant subway rats or the scent of urine.”
The three-date run, Aug. 20-22 at Théâtre Ste-Catherine (264 St-Catherine E.), kicks off their North American tour, a showcase of stand-up and celebrity piss- takes from the New York underground comedy scene.
The centrepiece is a cameo by “Celine Dion,” with Keller in creepily accurate drag. “We Quebecers knew her before Titanic, when she was all chin and frizzy hair,” says Keller. “When she talks, her energy is so manic, her way of communicating so exaggeratedly earnest. This is what I try to bring out in my impersonation—her inadvertent hilariousness.”
Other notables include comic and musician Wendy Ho, who’s joined the long list of dirty, funny broads like Margaret Cho with her YouTube ditty “Bitch, I Stole Yo’ Purse.” Tickets are $15 advance/students, $20 at the door.
by NEIL BOYCE
IS IT ART?
CUSTOM-MADE COMFORT: The Ikea-ization of the Western hemisphere has pretty much guaranteed that you and your neighbour have the same couch. But what if you could create your own unique furniture with the help of a single tool (no, I don’t mean an Allen key) and some elbow grease?
Dutch designer Marijn van der Poll has created the Do Hit chair, a stainless steel  rectangle that comes with its very own sledgehammer so you can bang it into your own ideal shape.
Measuring 3.5 feet by 2.5 feet and weighing in at 82.7 pounds, this likely isn’t the softest or lightest chair you could own, but it would definitely be the most surprising.
You can watch the designer bash one in until it perfectly fits his shape and request your own Do Hit chair at marijnvanderpoll.com.
Arts hole
PERVY POP ART: Veronica of Archie fame is among the various cartoon beauties imagined in the buff by artist Dave Arnold. His latest show Teenage Nudes opens at The Emporium Gallery (30305 St-Antoine W., #74) tonight, Thursday, Aug. 20 from 7–11 p.m. and runs until Aug. 26. • CLASSIC MEETS MODERN: Work by two very different artists: L. Piotrowski, a painter who strives to evoke beauty and good in the classic sense, and H. Dancer, who’s destroyed all of his paintings and now exhibits only works on paper, are on view until Sept. 5 at Gallery Gora (279 Sherbrooke W., #205).
Artistat
The age multidisciplinary artist Kat Coric will be turning this coming Saturday, Aug. 22, with a birthday party/fundraising event at Club Parking (1296 Amherst) from 10 p.m.–3 a.m., featuring DJ’s Stéfane Lippé and Patrick Guay. Proceeds will go to an HIV charity voted on by you, register your vote at kat.coric@gmail.com: 40
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