Feb. 11 

Feb. 13

While words allow us to reduce a work to its simplest expression, the filtering of visible phenomena reframes our experience of the world according to its most elementary geometry. A free observation of a post-Internet conception of landscape, Shadow Recorder 4V1 and Shadow Recorder 5V1 are sketches of ongoing research: How might line and colour embody the momentary experience of a moving shadow? Outside the confines of her studio, Karine Fréchette exposes two long swaths of sheer fabric to the elements, hanging them from metal structures like large flags fluttering on Place Publique. Studies of the effects of light due to variations in the solar cycle are associated with an analytical abstraction of forms and a process that emphasizes a repeated, asynchronous gesture. Methodical and meticulous, the latter allows the artist to make tangible an intangible fragment of reality, the transient experience of an opaque body intercepting light.

Feb. 17

A window’s frame encloses the field of vision; it allows us to look into the distance or, quite the opposite, secretly observe the activity taking place within. After staring out a large window that gives onto a brick wall, Jeanette Johns began wondering what was happening in her neighbours’ studios, on the other side of her studio walls. Since gatherings have been reduced as much as possible, the artist imagines another mode of connecting through a life-size reproduction of the arched window in her studio, in which she has replaced the glass by mirrors. Set on the ground and tilted to face the upper floors of the studio building, Moon as Mirror in Search for Life offers an astute mise en abyme in which the artist can observe her own and others’ reflections, guess their presence inside the building by seeing their lights on. While our current human experience is characterized by distance, Johns explores the symbolism of this mirror-window as a means of communication, reflecting that life in the studio continues in isolation and out of the public gaze.

Feb. 20

The reciprocity between the interior and exterior spaces of the studio and Place Publique is the starting point of several site-specific works of this project. Philippe Battikha extends the perimeter of the exhibition to the neighbouring streets by singling out a sound occasionally heard in Montreal, namely the whistle blast used to signal dynamite blasting. An air horn is concealed on the roof of Fonderie Darling, and the blaring sound of this device is modified to emit a warning signal in Morse code. Activated at irregular intervals, Save Our Souls creates a rupture in the urban soundscape with a gently ironic and subtly humorous gesture. Sending out the distress signal echoes the real sense of powerlessness felt by the Fonderie Darling community: How can the presence of art, artists, and cultural workers be assured in a neighbourhood beset by rampant real estate speculation? Just how long can the body tolerate to live in the middle of a perpetual construction site, surrounded by loud noises, vibrations, and debris?

Feb. 24 

Two works face each other: on one side, a sculpture of  the Na’vi protagonist of the blockbuster movie Avatar, and on the other, on a hanging banner, the image of an anonymous knight featured in the recruitment ads of Algorithme Pharma. On Place Publique, Michael Eddy draws a parallel between these two characters by examining the process of identifying with stories and myths, particularly through costume and personification. Neytiri and Allez au front pour la recherche refer to the manner by which certain characters become powerful tools for creating a form of fantastical militancy, experienced through fictional associations. The archetypes of the spiritual warrior and protector of her people and of the medieval hero modelled on the Jon Snow character from the hit series Game of Thrones embody the ideals of bravery and virtue that deeply resonate with the contemporary cultural imagination. In movies and advertising, the call to action—save one’s people, support medical research—gets associated with a progression from dehumanization to heroism. Entertainment, kitsch, populism, and ideology are thus intertwined; the polarization between reality and fiction gradually invades the public space and the media. Eddy’s work also reflects on his own experience at Fonderie Darling, a place that sometimes takes on the qualities of an isolated fortress in the middle of the Cité du Multimédia. While Ottawa Street has been the stage for much antagonism over the past decade, the artist imagines Place Publique as a mythical place, symbolizing a position of resistance against the transformation of an industrial neighbourhood into a neoliberal space.

March 05 

An awareness of the site inevitably guides the artists’ reflections and explorations in Place Publique; the works subtly accumulate, branching out into narratives that have resilience, resistance, and solidarity as their common thread. Untitled with Suet 2021 (After Joyce Wieland’s Solidarity 1973) is an assemblage of footwear cast in cement, coated in suet for the birds, and attached to a metal structure painted sky-blue. Beginning on the sidewalk, then veering into the street, Frances Adair Mckenzie’s work is a reference to an experimental film by Canadian artist Joyce Wieland, which documented a strike by the workers of the Dare Cookie Factory in Kitchener, Ontario, in the 1970s. The film shows dozens of female labourers’ feet shot in close-up as they march for equal pay and decent working conditions. In contrast to the images filmed by Wieland, Mckenzie’s cast feet are undisciplined and refuse to march in step; depending on the direction in which the toes are pointing, the line sometimes breaks up and sometimes goes backwards. Only two moulds were created to make the series; like History repeating itself, the shapes recur in a loop, giving the illusion of continuity and forward movement. To restrict these movements to the sculptural frame, Mckenzie draws inspiration from video animation processes, such as the walk cycle, and the editing techniques associated with the films of Dziga Vertov and the Russian avant-garde, such as sequential assemblage and geometric abstraction. A feminist homage and ode to difference and rebellion, Untitled with Suet 2021 (After Joyce Wieland’s Solidarity 1973) revisits, in sculpture, an experimental cinematic tradition that combines social consciousness with freedom of representation.

The artist dedicates this work to Ellen & Adam & Divina.

 

March 15 

The final proposition of this group exhibition, Ça et là is by the Marion Lessard collective and is based on a stream of observations of Place Publique. Negotiating an effect of distance and proximity, the collective will offer commentaries and descriptions  on the works installed on Ottawa Street and the day-to-day occurrences happening there. This approach, which accounts for uncertain presences and unpredictable absences entails a paradoxical gesture: that of speaking out without expecting to be heard. The comments, thoughts, and reactions of the Marion Lessard collective will be broadcast live via an old jobsite radio and retransmitted online, with a time delay of a few seconds, on WJFL 107.7 FM, the pirate radio station of the Fonderie Darling artists. An act of projection and attribution, the work takes up an indiscernible position where interior and exterior merge and where live, recorded, and broadcast voices succeed each other. Through these contradictions, Ça et là disorients listeners, confounds expectations by the very act of making us wait, and helps us to imagine a form of withdrawal.

While Everything Merges, Emerges, then Fades Again began with a sequence of annotations in rear projection, the exhibition ends with a series of comments, descriptions, and observations spoken out loud in the public space and on the web. This intervention closes the loop, in both space and time, by commenting on the things that are fading from the street before they’ve even had time to form clearly in our minds. Up to its last throes, this project, which calls for responses, rebounds, and ricochets, will be marked by the inevitable distance of interactions, the lag-time of exchanges, and by unique trajectories that ultimately bring us back to the starting point.