ISBN: 303778010X 9783037780107

Category: Architecture / General

Page count: 65

Montréal, 23 April 2003 - In a provocative installation, Québec artist Alain Paiement juxtaposes a wide range of photographic subjects from the CCA̕s collection with his own imagery, including a spectacular photomontage of the new Palais des congrès de Montréal. Between 23 April and 9 November, in the Octagonal Gallery, the Canadian Centre for Architecture is presenting "tangent e", the first of a series of four exhibitions organized by Consulting Curator Hubertus von Amelunxen. Quebecker Alain Paiement is the first artist invited to establish a dialogue with the collection by creating new works of art. Exhibition design is by Atelier In Situ, well known in Montréal for its conceptual approach to architecture. For the project, Hubertus von Amelunxen selected a corpus of two hundred photographs from the CCA's rich collection, ranging from the earliest days of photography to the present time, to which artists where invited to respond. Inspired by the steel and glass in many of these photographs, Alain Paiement did further research in the collection to deepen his insights. In creating his photomontages he focused on architecture new constructions in Montréal, where steel structures the gaze and glass offers a play between reflexion and transparency. According to von Amelunxen, the camera's eye, once it is trained on an architectural subject, as a tangent that touches a volume, a tangent that in turn undergoes a new tangential translation as it meets the gaze of a contemporary artist. The meeting here is no simple encounter with images from the past. Alain Paiement's new creation probes the spatial and temporal nature of perspective. "tangent e" is part of a developing tradition at CCA, in which architects and artists - Cedric Price, Irene Whittome, Peter Smithson, Herzog & De Meuron, all precede Alain Paiement in this adventure - bring their own ideas into conversation with collections", notes Nicholas Olsberg, Director of the CCA. Born in Montreal in 1960, Alain Paiement studied visual arts in Montréal, Brussels, and Paris. Since the 1980s he has been recognized as a major figure in contemporary art on both the local and international scenes, and his works have featured in many exhibitions in Canada and elsewhere. Honoured by many grants from the Canada Council for the Arts, he was awarded the prestigious Louis Comtois Prize in 2002. This first exhibition in the series "tangent e" is accompanied by a publication edited by Hubertus von Amelunxen and distributed internationally by the Swiss publishing firm of Lars Müller. The book takes the form of a conversation between Hubertus von Amelunxen and Alain Paiement, and presents the new works by Paiement as well as the photographs he himself chose from the CCA collection.