Pierre-François Ouellette art contemporain is pleased to announce a duo exhibition of photographic works by Isabelle Hayeur and Chih-Chien Wang in parallel to both artists' participation in the 2008 Quebec Triennial (Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal). Comprised of new and exisiting photographic and video works, the show will mark the first time these pieces have been exhibited in Montreal.
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Isabelle Hayeur - Les routes de sel
Les routes de sel (2003) shows one site (part of which was taken at Cape Cod, Massachusetts) in two different ecological states. One panel, Lagune[Lagoon], presents a luscious sea-side environment. The skies are loaded with the humidity from the sea and they nourish an abundance of plants. The scene could be called "idyllic" if not for a dangerously high level of ground occupancy along the peninsula. Oued [Wadi], the other panel, shows the same site in a state of environmental collapse. Of the crowded constructions there are only two original houses left, forming a sort of survivalist compound. The landscape has turned sinister. The sky is deadly blue, even the mountains on the horizon have taken on a burnt out colour. The construction was the object of intense collage work to produce the right "desertified" look, or the 180 degree view of the mountains which alone, is made up of twelve images. These panels must face one another on opposite walls to prevent a Reading of the diptych as a before-and-after representation of an ecological disaster. Instead, Hayeur wants to put the viewer in front of a choice, as if to imply his responsibility in the making of the landscape.
Hayeur’s work is militant in nature and it is interesting to see that the technique of composition of the image recalls an earlier militant period in art, the photomontages of the historical avant-gardes of the first decades of the twentieth century. There too, the essential mode of articulation was to bring together, on the same surface, cutouts from photographs of various realities and to let them produce discordant effects to reflect the class of forces of modern society. There is a difference, however, that time has made. Then the debate centered around the sharing of resources of a plentiful planet. Now, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, when it looks as if Alfred Hitchcock is going to be in charge of the weather, it is the fate of the planet itself that is the object of debate.
-Serge Bérard, from the catalogue Inhabiting/Habiter, Oakville Galleries, Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, 2006, p. 34-35.
Born in 1969, Isabelle Hayeur, lives and works in Montreal. She completed a BFA in 1996 and a MFA in 2002 at Université du Québec à Montréal. Since the late 1990s, she has been known for her large-format digital montages, while she also produced several videos, site-specific installations and a few net art works.
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Chih-Chien Wang - Time has hollows
“I am focusing on the experience of time: how it applies to objects, bodies, or space; and how we perceive the quality of time. For the most part, this photographic and video project concentrates on objects. The existence of an object preserves traces of its history: where it came from, where it stayed, whether or not it was abandoned – and for how long, and of being rediscovered. The status of an object reveals its individual past, and the combination of objects points to a universe: the space I live in, and the person as me.
I preserve traces of time in my work, and I remove certain time from objects. If manipulating an object can be seen as removing time – its history – from it, then I create time carriers that carry time with hollows. Time has hollows because I tend to forget. The space contains ignorance, and the image I create preserves the process of ignoring.
In the act of creating images, I try to remove the dust of time, the ignorance of a civilized life that floats in the room and sticks onto the surface of my surroundings. I am learning to confront time. My work focuses on everyday experience. I use photography and video to recreate and to examine these experiences. Sometimes they are my understanding about people, sometimes they reflect the society and city in which I live, and sometimes they answer my doubt about the self. These issues happen so often that it seems normal not to notice them. However, once they trigger our consciousness, they open up a conversation within us.”
-Chih-Chien Wang
Born in Taiwan, Chih-Chien Wang lives and works in Montreal. He studied cinema and theatre at the Chinese University in Taipei before moving to Canada. He holds an MFA in photography from Concordia University. His work has been exhibited nationally and internationally and is in the collections of the Musée National du Québec and the Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal.
