One itinerary, twenty-five years of exhibitions
Retrospective
Centre culturel canadien
May 11th, 2020 - December 31st, 2020
In 2020 the Canadian Cultural Centre is marking its fiftieth anniversary. To highlight this event – and the major gift of twenty-five years of visual arts archives made to France within the framework of the reopening of the centre in a brand new space – I have made a selection for you in the form of an itinerary. An itinerary with two levels, rooted in our present as well as in our history. This selection is not by any means the best or the most significant or the most representative. It is one itinerary among many. What counts here is the reminder that every element takes its place in an ensemble and from that ensemble emerges a certain portrait. Here, it is a certain national portrait with no claims to objectivity.
Every itinerary entails a beginning and an end but, for all that, is not reduced to a chronological order. Thus, the itinerary set out by this selection is not chronological. As in any exhibition, it is the proximity of the works to each other and their mutual influence that creates meaning. It is the evocation of a certain exhibition after another that will give the exercise its meaning.
On the other hand, there are two underlying chronologies: first, the itinerary began in the middle of the period of confinement and will last until the end of December 2020, which allowed me to calculate that the selection will include thirty-eight exhibitions; then, the itinerary involving the exhibitions related to the archival gift, that is from 1993 to present.
For the moment, I am developing the selection from week to week without commenting on it as I prefer to let evocation do its work.
Catherine Bédard
Curator of the exhibition programme, Canadian Cultural Centre
👉 Consult our archives!

Geoffrey Grier, Soixante ans de progrès [Sixty Years of Progress], Peinture / Painting, 1945, Archives du Chemin de fer Canadien Pacifique, Montréal / Canadian Pacific Railway Archives, Montreal, ID. 10205

Vue de l’installation présentée à L’Acropolis-Espace Méditerranée, Nice.

Serge Clément, Friperie, Montréal, Québec, 2008, avec l’aimable autorisation de l’artiste et de la Galerie Le Réverbère, Lyon

General Idea (avec Image Bank), FILE Megazine, « Mr. Peanut Issue », Vol. 1, No. 1, 15 avril 1972, avec l’aimable autorisation de Art Metropole, Toronto.

Vue de Island, Robert Kleyn, 1972, Coll. Vancouver Art Gallery © OpenUp Studio


Paysages grinçants d’un imaginaire canadien, 2011 Diana Thorneycroft, Group of Seven Awkward Moments, Winter on the Don, 2007

Attitude d’artistes (Louis Couturier et Jacky G. Lafargue), Identités flottantes, 2000

Vancouver Reflection, Vancouver, British Columbia, 1978. Collection de l’artiste, © IAIN BAXTER&

Jin-me Yoon, Through Phantasmagoria, 2008-2009
Jin-Me Yoon, "As It Is Becoming (Beppu, Japan) Kannawa District", 2008


L'écran d'épingles et les outils, Michèle Lemieux

Floating Frame, 2014, Courtesy Galerie Françoise Paviot, Paris

Michel Campeau, "Sans-titre 7987", La chambre noire, 2005-2009

Epilogue, 2005, techniques mixtes sur panneau de bois, 2,6 x 4,4 m

Michigan Theater, de la série Detroit Photos, 1999, avec l’aimable autorisation de l’artiste et de la David Zwirner Gallery NYC, London

Vue de l'exposition Body Missing de Vera Frenkel - Photo © Brice Derez / Centre culturel canadien

Bouddhas de la collection du Musée de Kaboul, vidéo, 2019.

Vue de l'exposition Robert Houle, Paris/Ojibwa - Photo © Centre culturel canadien

Vue d'installation de l'exposition Trevor Gould, Un Monde naturel (suite) - Photo © Brice Derez / Centre culturel canadien

Vue d'installation de l'exposition Unmasking. Photo © Centre culturel canadien

Kent Monkman, Miss Chief’s Wet Dream, 2018, détail/detail, photo: Joseph Hartman

Vue d'installation de l'exposition de Richard Purdy, Unrestored, 2005. Photo © Centre culturel canadien

Vue de l'exposition Fuzzy - Paul Collins et Marc Moret - Photo © Brise Derez / Centre culturel canadien