Presse (2009)
The revolution starts here, but it doesn't always end
Par Christine Redfern
Publié: The Gazette (Montreal), 2009-11-20 00:00:00 -0500
The exhibition titled The Work Ahead of Us by Memphis-born, Montreal-based artist Grier Edmundson is a diverse mix of mediums, styles and subjects. There is an oil painting of Thomas Paine, one of the founding fathers of the United States. There is also a painting of the Concorde, the supersonic airplane that flew from 1969 to 2003, and two paintings of Ronan Point, a 23-storey apartment tower outside London that was part of the trend in the 1960s to provide affordable, prefabricated housing. Drawings of Václav Havel and Russian artist Kasimir Malevich’s famous Black Square are among the other seven pieces hanging on the gallery walls. Standing in the centre of these works is a large wooden sculpture: a replica of an architectural maquette of a tower designed by Vladimir Tatlin in 1919. I spoke with Edmundson last week about this collection of artworks that remind us of failed revolutionary ideas, which were at one time or another indicative of so much hope.
Lisez le texte complet: http://www.montrealgazette.com/entertainment/revolution+starts+here+doesn+always/2247448/story.html
Exposition: The Work Ahead of Us • Le travail qui nous attend
Artistes: Grier Edmundson
Remixing Art History
Par Tania Mohsen
Publié: The Link (Concordia's independent newspaper), 2009-11-10 00:00:00 -0500
By remixing the work of his forefathers, artist Grier Edmundson hopes to create something visionary enough to make his own mark on history. His new exhibition, The Work Ahead Of Us, is not about conveying a message. Edmundson’s work sprouts instead from his interest in the past.
Lisez le texte complet: http://www.thelinknewspaper.ca/articles/1830
Exposition: The Work Ahead of Us • Le travail qui nous attend
Seeing Double
Par Ali Rahman
Publié: Hour, 2009-11-05 00:00:00 -0500
Oftentimes, representational painting culled from archival photography is perceived as a snapshot, a carefully selected moment that evokes and encapsulates a larger narrative, famed through the lens of the modern bricoleur. Grier Edmundson's exhibition _The Work Ahead of Us_ seems to be drawing not from the centre of a narrative but from its periphery; the images don't necessarily tell a story as much as they suggest one...
Lisez le texte complet: http://www.hour.ca/visualarts/visualarts.aspx?iIDArticle=18645
Exposition: The Work Ahead of Us • Le travail qui nous attend
Bucolic Battlegrounds
Par Lori Callaghan
Publié: Rover: Montreal Arts Uncovered, 2009-09-22 00:00:00 -0400
"Muddy, confusing and ominous, the war images in Amy-Claire Huestis’s latest exhibit Landscape with Bombers are an examination of the intrusion of battle on the pastoral. These are not the fields where generals clash or trenches are yet to be dug; this is where the forces of combat push back the barriers of common life to make room for warfare. It is a look at calamity in the making.(...)"
Lisez le texte complet: http://roverarts.com/2009/09/bucolic-battlegrounds/
Exposition: Landscape with Bombers
Artistes: Amy-Claire Huestis
Joe Battat's Playhouse
Par Cameron Skene
Publié: Canadian Art, 2009-09-16 00:00:00 -0400
Things are changing for Montreal, the perennial little brother of North America's big cities and big art scenes. In a review of last year's Quebec Triennial, the Globe and Mail asked, "Is Montreal the real art capital of Canada?" It's now a fair question. The city's art scene has seen a number of new spaces rise up to stake a claim in the community in the last decade. (...) Among these new galleries is Battat Contemporary, which is tucked away in Montreal's Little Italy, in an old industrial building shared by manufacturers and painters. Opened in April 2009, it is the brainchild of the toy magnate Joe Battat. (...) "The idea is to be a conduit," says Battat. He views his gallery as a combination salon/school/exhibition space, a catalyst for a network of support that will help develop a critical mass for Montreal's contemporary-art market. (...)
Lisez le texte complet: http://www.canadianart.ca/art/features/2009/09/01/joe-battat/
Haunted: The Uncanny in the Drawings of Sophie Jodoin
Par James D. Campbell
Publié: Etc Montreal, 2009-09-01 00:00:00 -0400
If drawings can be hanunted by old memories, even primordial ones, then Sophie Jodoin's installation made for a replete haunting at the inaugural exhibition of the Battat Contemporary art space. Seventy-five black-framed drawings, mostly of monstrously expressive, mostly human heads (with some notable exceptions), might have had an impact far greater as an ensemble than separate drawings if the subjects of those drawings were not such powerfully individualistic personae in their own right. (...)
Exposition: Headgames: hoods, helmets & gasmasks
Artistes: Sophie Jodoin
Sophie Jodoin - Headgames: Hoods, Helmets & Gasmasks
Par John K. Grande
Publié: Vie des arts (english edition) No 215, Summer 2009, p. 9., 2009-07-07 00:00:00 -0400
"As part of her ongoing War series, Jodoin's Headgames are arresting, not only for the paraphernalia of war these black conte on Mylar heads wear, but equally because they look seemingly innocent in many cases." (...) "The 75 dramatic drawings seen at Battat Contemporary have a processional beauty, in that each individual images is part of an ongoing sequence, and we read them within the continuity of the series, as an entity conceives of. Jodoin breathes life into age-old themes of war, social anomie and media's influence on our perception of truth with grace, talent and humility."
Lisez le texte complet: www.viedesarts.com
Exposition: Headgames: hoods, helmets & gasmasks
Artistes: Sophie Jodoin
Allison Katz: Ruthless in Chalk Farm at Battat Contemporary
Par Christina Kee
Publié: artcritical.com, 2009-06-20 00:00:00 -0400
Ruthless in Chalk Farm, Allison Katz’s solo exhibition at Battat Contemporary, is a collection of handmade pieces - a yellow wooden snake, a wheat-sheaf-laden funeral cloth, a still-life executed in sand - and several exceptional paintings. With a strength of execution that overpowers any complaint of arbitrariness, Katz conjures forms and images that are at once beautiful and funny, familiar and strange....
Lisez le texte complet: http://artcritical.com/kee/CKKatz.htm
Exposition: Ruthless in Chalk Farm
Artistes: Allison Katz
Ruthless at Battat
Par Sacha Jackson
Publié: Montreal Mirror, 2009-04-30 00:00:00 -0400
Operating outside of the usual gallery hotspots, Battat Contemporary (7245 Alexandra, #100) has set itself apart by setting up shop among the industrial complexes of Jean Talon Street. Having opened just a little over a month ago, they’re one of the newest galleries in the city and they celebrate the opening of their second show, Ruthless in Chalk Farm by Allison Katz tonight, Thursday, April 30 at 6 p.m. The exhibit, which is Katz’s first major solo show in the city, serves as a homecoming of sorts, as she was born and raised in Montreal but now lives and works in New York. The works featured in Ruthless are not easily pinned down to a single style or even a single medium, and the accompanying press release leaves much to the imagination. Written in a Q&A format incorporating Yves Saint Laurent’s answers to the Proust questionnaire, it gives hints as to the personality of the work and the artist, but invites viewers to see the work as a mystery to be explored.
Lisez le texte complet: http://www.montrealmirror.com/2009/043009/artsweek.html
Exposition: Ruthless in Chalk Farm
Artistes: Allison Katz
Win, lose or draw
Par Robyn Fadden
Publié: The Hour, 2009-03-19 00:00:00 -0400
Seventy-five black-framed drawings of faces half-hidden, half-merged with gas masks and helmets line a three-walled space at the sunlit Battat Contemporary gallery. Patterns emerge among them, but they never lose their lonely individuality, lined up as they are, an emotionally overwhelming, alienated armada. Such regimen coupled with fragility is a theme Montreal artist Sophie Jodoin has explored for many years....
Lisez le texte complet: http://www.hour.ca/visualarts/visualarts.aspx?iIDArticle=16892
Exposition: Headgames: hoods, helmets & gasmasks
Artistes: Sophie Jodoin