QUÉBEC CITY, Jan. 11, 2023 /CNW Telbec/ - While the Evergon. Theatres of the Intimate exhibition, which runs until April 23, 2023, invites the public to discover the monumental work of an iconic Canadian photographer, the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec (MNBAQ) is proud to announce that it will celebrate Québec art in 2023.
Works from the Québec collection will be the focus of several MNBAQ events, starting with the Us exhibition, which will propose converging views of self-awareness and awareness of others. A dialogue will then be created between these works and the creations of Alexander McQueen and those of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) in the Alexander McQueen : Art Meets Fashion exhibition, which will explore the British fashion designer's prolific creativity. Québec artists will also be highlighted in the exhibition of the MNBAQ Contemporary Art Award, which will feature the work of the five finalists of the 2023 competition. Lastly, View the Night, an original immersive exhibition featuring works from the Québec collection, will surprise visitors.
Focusing on the Riopelle Space
The year 2023 will also witness preparatory work and the beginning of the construction of the Riopelle Space in the wake of celebrations surrounding the artist's centenary. Consequently, all the MNBAQ's activities will be concentrated in the Pierre Lassonde Pavilion starting in January.
The new program will be relevant, moving, surprising, and constantly sensitive to societal issues. If art is essential to life as a powerful vector for reflection, in-museum experience is its catalyst since it can, depending on the circumstances, act as a guide, a beacon, a balm, and a source of hope. The diversity of the exhibitions will certainly contribute to making 2023 a better and, indeed, outstanding year.
A daring exhibition ending next spring
Evergon. Theatres of the Intimate
Until April 23, 2023
The MNBAQ is proud to highlight the work of Evergon, a key Canadian photographer and an unclassifiable, remarkably bold artist. It is presenting until next spring a complex, powerful retrospective devoted to this artistic and social pioneer. Over time, the artist has focused on essential questions such as sexual, body, and identity diversity. The exhibition assembles for the first time more than 230 works to celebrate a rich and diverse career spanning 50 years.
This major exhibition focuses on 10 sensitive, relevant themes covering Evergon's entire career from 1971 to the present. It dwells on the notion of the encounter between theatricality and intimacy, i.e., the public expression of the private sphere, to aptly represent this colourful individual's singular career.
The MNBAQ decided to broach Evergon's output during his lengthy career from a contemporary perspective, since the topics that inspire the artist, i.e., everyday life, self-staging, desire, death, fragility, or old age, concern everyone. Nudity and sexuality are treated directly, revealing a whimsical fantasy world in which the artist draws from fiction, mythology, and baroque painting.
By exploring varied photographic techniques, Evergon has produced striking imagery that is always moving and occasionally irreverent and which is often an extension of great classical painting.
The simultaneously political and sensualistic nature of his work sheds an atypical light on questions concerning gender identity while revisiting with rare vitality portraits, landscapes, and nudes, usually men. To those bold enough to discover his work, the artist humorously offers an irresistible warning: "Certain images may not shock you."
New must-see exhibitions
Us
Starting April 20, 2023
The Us exhibition stems from outstanding collaboration between the MNBAQ's exhibition, conservation, and mediation teams. It will propose converging views of self-awareness and awareness of others. The exhibition, to be installed in the vast, luminous Pierre Lassonde Pavilion, will offer visitors quality mediation experiences and an ideal showcase for the MNBAQ's collections during the construction of the future Riopelle Space.
Marie-Claude Pratte's major work, Portraits de société (1999-2000), is the focus of reflection surrounding the exhibition's genesis. The stereotyped representations of different players in society in 50 little pictures broach very topical problems such as caricature and the impact of prejudice on society.
The topic affords an opportunity to integrate a vast selection of works from the MNBAQ's collection by Jori Smith, Mimi Parent, Sam Borenstein, Jean-Baptiste Roy-Audy, John Heward, Raphaëlle de Groot, Françoise Sullivan, Manuel Mathieu, Manasee Maniapik, Regilee Piungituq, Eddy Firmin and Alfred Pellan, produced by artists who also question identity-related themes. This unique collection will raise essential questions: What defines me? What is identity?
The exhibition reveals another extremely topical question: forced or involuntary massive population shifts. Works from the MNBAQ's collection by Jinyoung Kim, Pitseolak Ashoona, Davidialuk Alasua Amittu, Couturier-Lafargue, and Ari Bayuaji examine this sensitive topic.
Lastly, the themes of a territory and its inhabitants naturally round out the exhibition. How do human beings, animals, and vegetation share real or imaginary territories and what relationships exist between them? These diverse topics have inspired Québec artists since Théophile Hamel in the 19th century, who produced the painting Adolphe, Auguste, Eugène et Alphonse Hamel, neveux de l'artiste, Caroline Elijassiapik, who produced a delicate basket woven from sand ryegrass, and Jean Paul Riopelle.
Through an approach that is entertaining and sometimes emotional and, indeed, critical, the exhibition Us enables visitors to assemble, awaken, and be filled with wonder, but above all to be open to the world.
Alexander McQueen : Art Meets Fashion
June 15 to September 10, 2023
Alexander McQueen : Art Meets Fashion, an exhibition of which Simons is the main presenting partner, is the first Canadian exhibition devoted to the effervescent creative universe of this key figure in the fashion industry between 1990 and 2010, will propose a reflection on the creative process of the enfant terrible of British fashion.
His critically acclaimed collections reflect a technical virtuosity rooted in references both autobiographical and encyclopaedic enriched by history, the natural sciences, technology, the media, and popular culture.
To explain his artistic heritage and sources of inspiration, a connection will be made between collections that he designed and art works from different periods, from antiquity to the present, of diverse cultural origins and using varied techniques. The works, some of them produced by the great masters of art history such as Dürer, Goya and Picasso, and by Québec artists François Baillairgé, Patrick Bernatchez, Clarence Gagnon, Holly King, Marcel Saint-Pierre, and Claire Savoie, transform themselves into genuine visual references that echo McQueen's creations and collections.
The exhibition highlights the universality of themes such as life, death, nature, mythology, religious beliefs, and the human condition that are central to Alexander McQueen's artistic approach. It will explore the interdisciplinarity that defined the career of this internationally renowned creator.
The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), in collaboration with the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, has organized the Alexander McQueen : Arts Meets Fashion exhibition. It will assemble nearly 200 objects from the LACMA collection, including 70 fashion ensembles signed Alexander McQueen from the Regina J. Drucker collection, 50 works of art including a selection of historic costumes, 17 headdresses and shoes produced by Los Angeles artist Michael Schmidt, and 28 works from the MNBAQ collection.
Exhibition of the work of the finalists for the MNBAQ Contemporary Art Award
October 19, 2023 to January 7, 2024
Since 2015, the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, in collaboration with the RBC Foundation, has presented the MNBAQ Contemporary Art Award, a major event on the Québec contemporary art scene. The biennial award is contributing to the career development of up-and-coming artists by offering them broader public recognition and enhanced visibility.
In 2023, for the first time, the award will support five emerging Québec artists. A jury comprising six contemporary art specialists will determine the list of the five artists, without restriction as regards to practice or medium, based on the excellence, sustained nature, and relevance of their output.
Each of the five artists selected will receive $10 000 and participate in a group exhibition at the MNBAQ in the fall of 2023.
At the conclusion of the exhibition, an award winner will be selected from among the five artists. A monograph devoted to the winner's work will be published in 2024 and the MNBAQ will acquire the artist's works for its collection.
View the Night
October 26, 2023 to March 17, 2024
The night has always fascinated, disturbed, or inspired. We perceive and experience it in our own way. It has stimulated the creativity of the MNBAQ's teams, who have designed an exhibition based on works from the Québec collection that will examine the universal themes of the night and the nocturnal. By placing the works at the heart of an immersive experience in which visitors' senses, feelings and, indeed, memories guide them, the imagined adventure will be astonishing.
View the Night comprises more than 60 works from the MNBAQ's collection, from ancient art to present-day art, and 15 works from the Musée de la civilisation. It assembles a selection of drawings, prints, paintings, photographs, sculptures, videos, and an array of uniquely intriguing objects.
The exhibition highlights the artists' virtuosity in making obscurity perceptible by drawing shapes, faces, and landscapes from the shadows, or by representing the maze of dreams.
View the Night is also an encounter with nocturnal light, whether it is natural, like moonlight and starlight, or artificial, like candles and electric lights.
Humankind has sought since time immemorial to ward off the night. In the fall of 2023, the MNBAQ invites the public to contemplate it.
Meaningful complementary cultural events
The MNBAQ is a public museum that serves its community and ensures that it proposes cultural events that Quebecers appreciate. The year 2023 will be no exception. The International Festival of Films on Art (FIFA) in the spring of 2023 will mark 30 years of valuable collaboration with the MNBAQ. In the fall, Lumière sur l'art, stemming from an exemplary partnership with the Société de développement commercial de Montcalm Quartier des arts (SDC Montcalm-Quartier des arts), will be presented for the ninth year. The giant lampshades on Avenue Cartier will once again delight passers-by.
The Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec is a state corporation funded by the Gouvernement du Québec.
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