April in Closet Gallery

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Montreal artist and Concordia student Alejandro Barbosa will be presenting the work The Stain Are We Ourselves in Closet Gallery from April 3-6.

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In a time of unprecedented expansion of the use of photographic apparatuses, looking back at the planet is still an impossibility for the vast majority of individuals on Earth. The Stain Are We Ourselves aims to playfully reconsider the mediating processes through which the depiction of planet Earth is generated and disseminated. By live streaming a series of balloons imprinted with more or less accurate world maps, I attempt to parallel the precarious viewership that accepted-as-true images of the Earth suppose.

(My project title is borrowed from Slavoj Žižek’s article Hurricane Irma Will Happen Again – So We Need the Answers to Some Difficult Questions about Global Politics 1)

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This work is a part of a series of projects presented by Concordia undergraduate students. Other projects are by Georgia Graham (5-9 March) and Juliana Delgado (29-31 March). We thank FASA Concordia for generously supporting this project.

 

Alejandro A. Barbosa (b.1986) is a visual artist currently living in Montréal. Alejandro will be receiving his Bachelor of Fine Arts in Photography from Concordia University in 2018. He is currently an Undergraduate Fellow at Milieux Institute for the 2017-18 academic year, a member of Milieux’s Curatorial Research Group, and a member of LISP Reading: LGBTQ+ Photographic Reading Group. His work is concerned with the mediative depiction of planet Earth with a particular interest in universalist discourses, peripheral geographies, and consumerist culture. Barbosa also keeps a curatorial practice. As a curator, his focus lies on the expansion of photo-based practices in a long-term, cross-border conversational process. He has exhibited in Canada, the United States, Argentina, and Peru. His work is part of the collection of the Museum of Latin American Art (California, USA). instagram

1 Slavoj Žižek, “Hurricane Irma Will Happen Again – So We Need the Answers to Some Difficult Questions about Global Politics,” Independent, September 12, 2017, https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/hurricane-irma-climate-change-recycling-donald-trump-rehousing-slavoj-zizek-a7942256.html.

March in Closet Gallery

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Montreal artist and Concordia student Juliana Delgado will be presenting the live streamed work Three Unattending Moons at closetgallery.ca on March 29-31.

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Three Unattending Moons
29-31 March, 2018

Three Unattending Moons is a three-day installation exploring the passage of time through melting ice with superimposed audio. The projected sounds combine ASMR recordings of recited poetry and writings, accidental footage and experimental music. This durational piece draws on the magnetism of the sea, on love, and the importance of time to heal all wounds.

This work is a part of a series of projects presented by Concordia undergraduate students. Other projects are by Georgia Graham (5-9 March) and Alejandro Barbosa (3-6 April). We thank FASA Concordia for generously supporting this project.

 

Juliana Delgado is a multimedia artist based in Montreal, QC. Her practice combines painting, sound art, installation and sculpture to allow for further explorations into site-specificity and spatial understandings of art. Delgado is currently pursuing her Bachelor’s in Painting and Drawing at Concordia University and is expected to graduate in 2020.

March in Closet Gallery

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Montreal artist and Concordia photography student Georgia Graham will be presenting the work A Self in Constant Movement in Closet Gallery on March 5-9. Exploring self-portraiture, Graham takes a different approach for each day of the live stream and is requesting submissions of self-portraits from the public.

This work is the first in a series of projects in Closet Gallery by Concordia undergraduate students. Future projects will be presented by Juliana Delgado and Alejandro Barbosa.

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A Self in Constant Movement by Georgia Graham
5 – 9 March, 2018

Self-portraiture: honouring the act of looking at oneself, a meditative and transformative practice full of strength and vulnerability and both intuitive and intellectual potential.

Day 1. Tracing the body
Day 2. Material for exploration
Day 3. Performing self-portraiture
Day 4. Documentation
Day 5. Submissions and live performance

Georgia Graham is an artist and musician from BC, based in Montreal QC. Her practice includes photography, video, performance and sound, and often explores the subject-artist relationship, identity, agency and self. She is co-curator of the annual photography show Magic Lantern and she will be receiving her Bachelor’s of Fine Arts in Photography from Concordia University in 2019. instagram

Press Release: Closet Gallery welcomes projects by Concordia undergraduate students

For Immediate Release: February 26, 2018

Exhibition by Georgia Graham, March 5-9, 2018
Exhibition by Juliana Delgado, March 29-31. 2018
Exhibition by Alejandro Barbosa, April 3-6. 2018

MONTRÉAL, QC — Closet Gallery is pleased to announce projects will be presented by Concordia undergraduate students during the Winter 2018 semester. The selected projects by Georgia Graham, Juliana Delgado, and Alejandro Barbosa will explore approaches to self-portraiture, the passage of time through melting ice, and a research based work on outer space. They can be viewed as live streams at http://www.closetgallery.ca and are generously supported by FASA Concordia.

Over the past year, Montreal artists Lisa Theriault and Phil Mercier have been sharing art projects in a gallery space they created in a small walk-in closet in their apartment. First showing works by themselves and friends, the space presented an opportunity for artists to experiment with installations that take over the closet and are live streamed on Closet Gallery’s webpage (www.closetgallery.ca).

As artist-run spaces are increasingly going without permanent physical spaces and are instead opting to present works in unconventional sites, Closet Gallery takes this notion even further as an online venue.

Theriault spoke of the idea, “it’s not always possible to see an artwork in person, so we end up seeing it in a book or online instead, but it’s not the same thing. We wanted to recognize that with this space and think about art existing online. We’re playing with that relationship.”

Closet Gallery recently opened up proposals to Concordia undergraduate students. Mercier is in Concordia’s photography program and recognizes the challenges in presenting work as a student. “Students need more opportunities to experiment and share their work. We wanted to see what they would do with the space.”

For additional information on the exhibitions or Closet Gallery, visit Closet Gallery’s website (www.closetgallery.ca) or contact Lisa Theriault and Phil Mercier at contactclosetgallery@gmail.com.

Press Photos:

Photo: Lisa Theriault and Phil Mercier in their apartment studio
Photo credit: Marie-Lyne Quirion
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1cKciCdevxHtUhI4yl2CNY1wx-T2I4m-_/view?usp=sharing 

Photo: Closet Gallery is live streamed from a closet in Mercier and Theriault’s apartment
Photo credit: Phil Mercier
https://drive.google.com/file/d/10SFkBFSPgkEpaNLOmJzKeeJbMantRmJn/view?usp=sharing 

November in Closet Gallery

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For the November showing in Closet Gallery, Montreal artist Lucas Regazzi will share an evolving photo installation called A dinosaur toy grows in a glass of water.

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A dinosaur toy grows in a glass of water by Lucas Regazzi
20 – 24 November, 2017

Once a day, over the course of five days, the curator will mount an image on the wall. Its print will grow incrementally, eventually swelling and spilling over structure, questioning itself, liberating me from _______________, or ______________ from me.

It is a canonical addressee of my family’s memory. I gather my mom thinks the picture very adorable, or illustrative of something important. I grew up alongside it, always writhing its way into portrait displays on the walls of every home we lived in.

I was with my aunt and my cousin at African Lion Safari–an open air zoo in Southern Ontario–where we came upon a wet, concrete play park on the grounds. I really loved to swim as a child, however I was ill equipped to do so in this instance; I hadn’t any trunks to change into. My aunt suggested I go swimming in my underwear, and so reluctantly I removed my clothes. I was captured, contemplating my predicament, lounging in horror at the sight of my body. I’m not sure it was this way really, but in my head, the kids watching me were laughing, aghast.

I was listening to a podcast recently that said emotions don’t uncontrollably happen to us. Rather, our emotions are constructed through cultural methods that sculpt our affective responses. At the domestic site, in the presence of such a powerful truth–this photograph–my position on myself must have shifted. What could have faded away absolutely was rehashed over and over again over time. I am now sheepish and uncomfortable, in most clothes and in general. I often feel abject in my body.

Katherine Hubbard once pointed to the ministry of language as if in an attempt to augment its authority over sensation. As an artist dealing with the photographic, I gather Hubbard is concerned with the ethics of capture. Being is slippery and does not wish to sit (nor does it fit easily) inside of the confines of the frame, its invisible cage. A dinosaur toy grows in a glass of water contemplates the plights of containment.
About the artist

 

Lucas Regazzi (b. 1995) is an emerging artist, curator and poet based in Montreal, Quebec. His work has been recently featured in the Haunt Journal of Art at the University of California, Irvine and Montreal-based publication Bad Nudes. Aside from maintaining an artistic and curatorial practice, Lucas is the sitting Art Director for the Void Magazine at Concordia University, and will be receiving his Bachelor’s of Fine Arts in Photography and Art History from the institution in 2018. website twitter instagram

October in Closet Gallery

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For the October showing in Closet Gallery, Montreal artist Mischa Greig will share a fresh flower arrangement in the closet called Invitation for bodily being.

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Invitation for bodily being
2-6 October, 2017

While watching the brief life of these flowers, you are invited to notice your sensations. Can you develop a more corporeal understanding? Can you find empathy?

Our limited sensorial and epistemological systems are inadequate in understanding ourselves and our experience. Cut flowers surpass these boundaries and reveal meaning in the unfamiliar. They become a medium for evoking the peculiar, or the unknown.

By this ‘Art of Noticing’, we can test the heart’s capacity.

This bodily way of being in the world.

Is it energizing? Quieting? Does it bring you stillness?

Hopefully it will deepen your attention to the non-human world, and further to your bodily sensation. To discover or rediscover empathy.

 

Mischa Greig is an anthropologist/florist/artist working in the care sector in Montreal. She joins those disciplines to make sense of symbolic language, relationship, and communication.

August in Closet Gallery

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For the August showing in Closet Gallery, Montreal artist Hailey Guzik will share a multimedia installation in the closet called Handle Me.

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Handle Me
21-25 August, 2017 from 10-6 pm EST

AvaSlip (@gl.tchb.tch) is a concept, not a person. By examining the notion of internet alias’ through the lens of “Glitch Feminism,” she deconstructs the presentation of online bodies. The act of “glitching” serves to fabricate an alternate reality, where conceptions of social media are dissociated from their contemporary uses (communication, self-presentation, etc). This installation transforms AvaSlip’s online internet presence into a physical manifestation, where her character is challenged through material and digital acts of construction and destruction. The deliberate “glitching” of images and objects aims to harness a moment of disruption in order to provide an alternate way of thinking about online personas.

 

Hailey Guzik is a visual artist with maritime roots working in Montreal, QC. Her multidisciplinary practice in painting, drawing, sculpture and video shows an interest in material exploration in relation to individual perceptions of inhabited spaces and surrounding environments. Visit her website here.

July in Closet Gallery

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For this first art showing in Closet Gallery, Lisa Theriault will share a video installation called work in the gaps of the net that re-enacts the invisible preparations that go into making, through the tying of a net.

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work in the gaps of the net
17-21 July, 2017 from 10-6 pm EST

a net is a barrier, is a vessel
a net is a repetition, of strands, of knots, of moving shapes
a net is a tool, an adornment
a net is wound, fastened, tied, floating; capable but barely there 

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Lisa Theriault is a visual artist originally from Atlantic Canada, now based in Montreal, QC. Her works in printmaking, drawing, sculpture, and video reflect on landscapes influenced by human intervention through creation and construction. Visit her website here.