Works by Ewen, Bijl, Whittome and Garrin provide an air-conditioned summer at the Musée d'art contemporain

by KEITH MARCHAND

As you strut down the street without a natural fibre touching your body, sporting your hip, faux-retro duds, you begin to realize that summer heat and materials spun from the finest plastics do not go too well together. Time to get your funky ass into some air conditioning and, since you want to look all nice and cultured, you try a museum...

There are four excellent shows happening over the course of the summer at the Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal. Here is a brief overview:

Paterson Ewen: Earthy Weathers/Heaven Skies (to Sept. 21)

Featuring almost 60 works, Earthly Weathers/Heavenly Skies is a major survey of celebrated Canadian artist Paterson Ewen's career, spanning over six decades. Born in Montreal in 1925, Ewen began to seriously study art in the 1940s at the School of Art and Design at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts under the tutelage of Gooderidge Roberts and Group of Seven member Arthur Lismer. In the '50s and early '60s, he became involved with abstraction through the influence of the Automatists (e.g. Paul-Émile Borduas and Jean-Paul Riopelle) in Quebec and the American Abstract Expressionists. By the late '60s and the early '70s, Ewen started to utilize the types of "rough" materials that came to define his work: steel, wood, rubber, linoleum--all leading to the works on plywood that have become his most renowned. Using an electric router to groove, score and gouge wood surfaces and using paint to articulate these scars and craters, Ewen played a significant role in resurrecting and elevating the landscape painting. It is indeed these works--such as "Northern Lights" and "Halley's Comet As Seen by Giotto"--that end up stealing the show.

Guillaume Bijl: Art Beyond Reality (to Sept. 21)

This exhibit marks the first time this eminent Belgian artist will be shown in Canada. The first section of the exhibit is dedicated to Bijl's "transformation installations," which could be described as installation work that reproduces in elaborate detail (and at times, on a massive scale) various easily recognizable environments. The artist creates what he refers to as "a reality in a non-reality" by reproducing locations such as quiz-show sets, gymnasiums, private dwellings and, in this case, prehistoric characters in a cartoonish cave dwelling. Bijl does not consider the gallery or museum space to have any particular function or basis in reality on its own, which allows the installations to be seen as three-dimensional still-lifes that reflect directly on contemporary society.

The second "compositions" series are on a smaller scale and are composed of everyday objects (old film posters, religious and classical statuary, picture frames, canned goods, etc.) displayed as if they were commodity items, while at the same time giving the impression of some sort of archaeological significance. Guillaume Bijl is presenting the audience with an anthropology for the modern world and an examination into the links between art and consumer society.

Irene F. Whittome (to Oct. 19)

As part of a series to display the museum's permanent collection, the Irene Whittome exhibition will feature 10 works from the museum's collection plus two new pieces, spanning an almost 30-year period. Whittome has always been concerned with the notion and role of the museum. By recontextualizing and categorizing highly personalized objects as displays, she questions and evaluates the very basis of collecting and the collection. She creates her own artifacts, whether by imbuing her work with totemic qualities or by placing them behind glass cases. She is a collector of images, signs, objects and gestures around which she creates a mythology that seems to touch, quite effectively, some sort of collective unconscious.

Paul Garrin: Society in Chaos (June 5-Aug.10)

New York artist Paul Garrin addresses issues such as social injustice, violence, censorship and increasing urban paranoia through the use of electronic media in two interactive installations: "Yuppie Ghetto with Watchdog" and "White Devil." Formerly a student of Hans Haacke and assistant to and collaborator of Nam June Paik (installation and video artist, respectively), Garrin engages the public both physically and emotionally as one is "virtually" attacked by a snarling pit bull and a German shepherd while navigating a "virtual" environment in his two pieces. The works raise various questions regarding class division and surveillance by putting the viewer in very unpleasant situations.

A selection of Garrin's videos made in the '80s will compliment the exhibition by giving the public a sense of the artist's development as well as the development of electronic media itself.

Other stuff you really can't afford to miss

Canadian Centre for Architecture: Walt Disney Theme Parks: The Architecture of Reassurance (June 17-Sept. 28) A survey of some of the most complex, decadent and silly architecture done by some of the biggest names in the business to accommodate chubby, sunburnt visitors looking for opulence American-style.

The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts: Exiles and Emigrés: The Flight of European Artists from Hitler (June 19-Sept. 7) A look at the artistic communities that were ravaged by the Nazis during the Second World War and forced to flee--thus having a tremendous impact on their newly adopted countries. The exhibition features works by Max Beckman, Wassily Kandinsky, Oskar Kokoschka and Laszlo Moholy-Nagy (to name but a few). The installation in Montreal was designed by architect Frank Gehry.

The McCord Museum: Aislin and Chapleau Caricatures (to Sept. 20) If political satire is your thing, then this is some cartoon wackiness that you don't want to miss.

Option Art's Art Map of Quebec: The Option Art map lists and pinpoints 112 art-oriented sites throughout the province and anyone wishing to contact an artist's atelier can contact the artist directly. The map features the greater Montreal area, the Laurentians, Eastern Townships, Outouais, Quebec City, Charlevoix and a whole lot more. It is available through all CAA offices, Tourism Quebec Centres, various VIA Rail stations and five border crossings. It's free of charge, in both English and French. Info: Option Art, 932-3987.