Review: Collage Group Expo at Monastiraki

Benoit Depelteau reviews this collage exhibition at one of Montreal’s favourite art spots.

“The interest of such a show is to offer a panorama of the different practices in collage at the moment. Like a snapshot, it documents the vivacity of Montreal’s scene.”

Exhibition – John Stezaker at Kemper Museum

January 27 to April 23, 2012

John Stezaker
at Kemper Museum

The exhibition reveals his lifelong fascination with the potent force of images, showcasing his investigations into the ways visual language can create meanings that vary dramatically according to context.

Happy Childhood: Jason Galligan-Baldwin

at Galerie Maison Kasini

January 14th to February 18th, 2012

Jason Galligan-Baldwin presents a series of collage-paintings that explore childhood memory. When the artist’s mother gave him a box filled with his childhood drawings of astronauts, report cards, and poorly-received term papers, he saw it as a new artistic undertaking.

Ariane Fairlie

Ariane Fairlie was born in Toronto and moved to Montreal in 2010 to pursue an education as a studio-arts major at Concordia University. She is inspired by activism, especially within an art context, and interested in collage as one of the last (mostly unacknowledged) frontiers in the art community. Painting and drawing dominate her practice, although digital print has found new appeal, and writing has and always will be a great passion.

Benoit Depelteau

Benoit Depelteau was born in 1977 in Montreal. After finishing fine art studies at the Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM), he opened up a screen printing studio and began to make art using the moniker Px(c), his corporate alter-ego. After years of painting and printing, he became more and more interested in collage, until this media became the main object of his production. His work has been exhibited in group shows and events in the United States, Canada, Germany, Sweden and Turkey. Since 2006, Px(c) is represented by Kasini House/Maison Kasini which hosted his two solo shows, “Adjacking” in 2007 and “Art, Commerce & Catastrophes” in 2010.

Life On Paper

By Aprile Elcich

We’ve entered a new art scene; one where everybody wants to collage. Cut and paste just feels so right. Maybe it’s because that’s one of the first things we learn to do creatively. It makes sense that art has gone in this direction—collage is usually easier, faster, more available, and more versatile. Masterpieces are less time-consuming. This “unconventional” technique can be just as expressive as any other, and it is quickly becoming more of a driving force than traditional art. I feel that, in some ways, collage represents our way of coping with the ever-changing modern world. The cities we live in have an impact on us, and we express them in the way we create.

Why Collage?

By Benoit Depelteau

Why collage? Why is it relevant today? So many things come to my mind.

First of all, I could say that collage played a significant role at the beginning of modern art when Picasso and Braque started to assemble what they found in their studio on a cardboard. They would meet almost every night to talk about their discoveries…

Kimberly Musial Datchuk

Kimberly Musial Datchuk has a doctorate in art history specializing in nineteenth-century European art. Her 2013 article “Travail de panneau: The Effects of Early Film on Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec’s Au Cirque Series” received the International Award for Excellence from the Journal…

Liz Cohn

Oregon-born artist Liz Cohn has been making and exhibiting her works in collage, mixed media, painting and assemblage for nearly 30 years. For seven years, she was a member of the artist operated 12×16 Gallery. Liz then organized the mail…