La Biennale de Montréal 2000

The Biennale de Montréal is an event bringing together contemporary artists in the fields of visual arts, as well as architects, town planners, and artists working with video and electronic media.

With its first edition in 1998, the Biennale de Montréal was launched by the Centre international d'art contemporain (CIAC) as a follow-up to Les Cent jours d'art contemporain de Montréal, an unforgettable yearly event that allowed hundred of artists to gain recognition all through its eleven years of existence.

For its second edition, which will be held between the 28th of September and the 29th of October 2000, the Centre international d'art contemporain (CIAC) surrounded itself with a team of intuitive and enthusiastic curators, each of whom selected in their respective field of expertise a series of artworks representative of the current production in contemporary art.

In the visual arts component, for the most imposing exhibition in terms of number of participants as well as for the space it will occupy at the Palais du Commerce, the curator Peggy Gale gathered 35 artists from 11 countries around a proposition dealing with the relationship to «time». Film, video, sculpture, photography, installation: all these mediums are bringing their contribution to the reflexion of this exhibition called Tout le temps/Every time.

For his part, the curator Georges Adamczyk invited 16 Canadian architecture firms to exhibit their plans, models and sketches proposing a view of the house of today, the one which could be meeting all our modern requirements. In all, 24 housing projects will be on display.

Finally, Sylvie Parent, the curator for electronic arts, became interested in this «other world», which sometimes represents the virtual world, sometimes the beyond. The public will be able to peruse 10 artworks conceived for the Web at the Internet café of the Biennale.

For the Montreal cultural milieu, this is the chance to witness a stimulating meeting of the minds between local creators and those from abroad. The Biennale de Montréal wants to be an occasion for exchange and discovery, not only for the artists themselves, but also for the public that wishes to get acquainted with new ways of expression in contemporary art and architecture.

It should also be noted that the Biennale will give the public the opportunity to see for the first time the projects and models submitted by the five finalists for the Grande bibliothèque du Québec architectural contest.

VISUAL ARTS "Tout le temps/Every Time" Tout le temps/Every Time is an exhibition of hybrids and hedged bets. A series of ineffable and mysterious "presents" and pasts. There is every time, all the time, time over and over, time being all there is. As Francis Alÿs has put it, "Time is a trick of the mind." We have all the time in the world.

Time is on everyone's mind, for we are perpetually in a hurry. This exhibition is a glance towards artists sliding alongside Time. There are no clocks or pendulums here, no counters in plain terms. But we have indicators, borders, a division between past and future. There are points of junction or transition, detours and delays, crossings, even labyrinths to lead us inwards and astray. Tout le temps/Every Time considers slippage and blocks, suspended time, truncated progress and misdirected order. It is also a celebration.

It is no surprise that much of the work is literally time-based, taking the form of film, video, kinetic pieces, photography and installation. More unexpected perhaps is the virtual disappearance of painting in this exhibition, and the remarkable strength of drawing and sculpture. In the end though, almost all are installations of sorts. And none is pure and simple.

Most of the works in Every Time are very new, some created particularly for the site and situation. Ayse Erkmen, Philip Napier, Robert Houle and the Klat group, are all producing unique projects for Montreal. Others are shaping their works for the Palais du Commerce, most notably Yoshihiro Suda and Gaylen Gerber, as a continuation of their recent production.

Included here are sculptures by Yoshihiro Suda and Andreas Slominski. Suda presents exquisite flowers painstakingly carved, so accurate that they can hardly be distinguished from living blossoms. At the opposite extreme, Andreas Slominski fashions sculptures inspired by traps of every size, even to making windmills as traps for the air itself.

Jean-Pierre Gauthier's witty construction offer an extravaganza of bubbling brooms, whirling mops, banging utensils and tools. Les Anges gardiens of Diane Landry marshalls a bank of umbrellas in a lyrical kinetic drill, while Barbara Steinman mounts a delicate Chandelier in raw steel chain. Both dark matter and sparkling light are indicated here, an insistence on the dangerous beauty of opposites. Several artists present texts: Christian Marclay, Germaine Koh, Geneviève Cadieux, Ana Torfs. Memory is at work, on the walls, in newspaper, in the air. A memorial against forgetting.Other times.

Sound is the focus for Rodney Graham, in Parsifal (1882-38, 969, 364, 735) a form of work-in-progress captured on CD in the catalogue and presented in live performance during Every Time/tout le temps.

In film and video are new works by Geneviève Cadieux, Marijke van Warmerdam, Euan Macdonald, Stan Denniston, Christian Marclay, Tacita Dean, Francis Alÿs, Teresa Hubbard + Alexander Birchler. While the list seems ample there is remarkable variety: every variant of stillness, aggression, contemplation, reference. Nature and culture: a time for new conceptions.

More ephemeral is Bertrand Lamarche's Tore, a swirling galaxy of reflected light confected with the most modest of means. Place des peaux by Michael Snow, conjures a dazzling interplay of coloured shadows in a field of coloured gels. These are times of exploration and discovery: open time.

More physically substantial is the selection of Eric Cameron's Thick Paintings installed on plinths. Produced over periods of up to twenty years, more than half remain works in progress, time encapsulated. Elsewhere, Massimo Guerrera combines sculpture, furniture and "lived space" in a complex installation that continues to develop. The large-scale photographic works of Nicolas Baier and AA Bronson, play meditations on living and death, recollection and memorial, active proof of the continuing importance of time-specific media from an earlier century.

Daniel Roth investigates imagined landscapes constructed in real environments through wall drawings and sculptures. Further drawings have been mounted by Francis Alÿs, Euan Macdonald, Gu Xiong and Edward Pien. Gaylen Gerber articulates the space as a whole with his Backdrop paintings that acts as both walls and works, intentionally hybrid, embracing and accentuating the architecture of the site. For Gerber, time is palpable, a juxtaposition of continuity and difference.

Time is all we have.

Peggy Gale, 2000

La Biennale de Montréal 2000

VISUAL ARTS
"Tout le temps/Every Time"
Kurator Peggy Gale

KünstlerInnen:
Francis Alÿs, Ayse Erkmen, Philip Napier, Robert Houle, Klat group, Yoshihiro Suda, Gaylen Gerber, Andreas Slominski, Jean-Pierre Gauthier, Diane Landry, Barbara Steinman, Christian Marclay, Germaine Koh, Geneviève Cadieux, Ana Torfs, Rodney Graham, Marijke van Warmerdam, Euan Macdonald, Stan Denniston, Christian Marclay, Tacita Dean, Teresa Hubbard & Alexander Birchler, Bertrand Lamarche, Eric Cameron, Massimo Guerrera, Daniel Roth, Euan Macdonald, Gu Xiong, Edward Pien, Gaylen Gerber ...