MONTREAL’S CONTEMPORARY ART MUSEUM (MCAM) recently unveiled three new exhibitions running from October 10, 2009 to January 3, 2010, focusing on the work of three talented women artists from Montreal, Vancouver and the U.K. If Francine Savard, Tacita Dean and Tricia Middleton don’t seem to have much in common at first, look closer and you’ll see that the common theme in their work is the deconstruction of modern myths in our society.
Francine Savard’s retrospective explores the relationship between painting and space, somewhat like
CLAUDE TOUSIGNANT’S EXHIBITION presented earlier this year at the MCAM. However, Savard adds a cryptic poetry to her artwork, including references to geography, literature and language. She deconstructs all the codes of art and painting; instead of showing a final work that represents a portrait or a landscape, she prefers to exhibit what can’t be expressed on a canvas, creating an impossible dialogue between the meaning of a work and the materials that convey the message.
Tacita Dean deconstructs the idea of contemporary dance with a live performance filmed and projected on six large screens. She asked renowned choreographer Merce Cunningham to interpret John Cage’s work in three movements,
4’33’’, entirely composed of ambient silence. The 88-year old Cunningham sits in a wheelchair and doesn’t move, expressing himself through different poses for each variation. How can you show such an essential concept as silence? Tacita Dean answers this question beautifully in this heartbreaking video series about human fragility.
