Exhibition cases

A mysterious monster, a Black Panther,
a Winnipegger, a jazz legend & more

DAILY CHORES: Marcel Dzama’s
“The Work of Justice and Revenge Is Done”

by STACEY DEWOLFE

Though the weather outside is frightful, the bunker at Parisian Laundry (3550 St-Antoine W.) is toasty warm. Head down and check out David Armstrong Six, who takes possession of the space tomorrow, Friday, Jan. 15 with an installation inspired by T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets. The Dry Salvages is an homage to this modernist masterpiece that also functions as a living narrative of the artist’s process. Upstairs, Rick Leong’s I Am Nature captures the landscapes witnessed by the artist during his autumn sojourn in Alberta.

The following night, Saturday, Jan. 16, Skol Gallery (372 Ste-Catherine W, #314) gets things rolling with Steve Lyons’ Loch Ness, an evolving installation that uses the mythical creature in its investigation of image construction. Just down the hall, Division Gallery (#311) has Juliana Pivato’s I Want to Be Here With You, while Vox (1211 St-Laurent) opens its season with Belgian photographer Chantal Maes’ Rustlings of the Soul. Maes uses the image to capture new evocations of space and time, those fleeting moments between speech and thought.

Over at DHC/ART (451 and 465 St-Jean) a retrospective of the work of Finnish filmmaker and video artist Eija-Liisa Ahtila entitled Int. Stage-Day opens Jan. 29. Referring to her work as “human dramas,” Ahtila’s multi-screen videos use the language of cinema to make the intimate manifest, exploring emotions of love and loss with humour and an appreciation of the absurd. Her split-screen projection “Where Is Where?” is simultaneously on view at the Darling Foundry (745 Ottawa).

SEASIDE SHENANIGANS: A work by Nadia Moss

A home for Herman

In conjunction with Black History Month, the Leonard & Bina Ellen Art Gallery (1400 de Maisonneuve W.) hosts a lecture by activist and artist Jackie Sumell on Feb. 10. What began as a conversation between Sumell and imprisoned Black Panther Herman Joshua Wallace in 2003 has grown into an art project encompassing social sculpture and community, entitled The House That Herman Built.

February also brings two of my favourite artists to the Museum of Contemporary Art (185 Ste-Catherine W). Of Many Turns promises to be the largest ever showing of works by Winnipeg-born multidisciplinary artist Marcel Dzama, featuring dioramas, videos, sculptures, paintings and drawings in its exploration of the artist’s themes. An exhibition of recent work by Étienne Zack features two new large-scale paintings produced specifically for the show.

In early March, many of the city’s smaller spaces will be taken over by Art Matters, Concordia’s undergraduate festival. The best way to find out about what is going on is to check the site artmattersfestival.

com. Later that month, Push Gallery (5264 St-Laurent) has a solo show by local artist and illustrator Nadia Moss, whose mixed-media drawings are serious in tone despite their fantastical imagery.

And finally, as April draws to a close, the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (1380 Sherbrooke W.) pays tribute to legendary musician Miles Davis with We Want Miles. Recalling the highlights of his life and career, the multimedia retrospective is a sure crowd-pleaser, reminding us that the summer tourist months are not so far away.