Seven kilometers of art exhibition in the Montreal`s underground city

COMMUNIQUÉ – FOR IMMEDIATE RELASE
Seven kilometers of art exhibition
in the Montreal’s underground city
New satellite route
30 activities: guided tours, visit of
artists' studios, 5 à 7
Febuary 27 to March 20, 2016
www.artsouterrain.com
Febuary 3, Montreal 2015 – Since 2009, ART SOUTERRAIN has attracted a large audience
to discover contemporary art in the context of a unique festival in North America that spans in
the Montreal’s underground city and sees over 100 000 pedestrians per year.
The artistic team of ART SOUTERRAIN 2016, consisting of Frédéric Loury, principal curator
and general director, Anais Castro and Marie-Josée Rousseau, two invited Quebecois
curators, came together to explore the theme Must Art be appealing ? for the 8th edition of
the festival. Le recours à un esthétisme marqué est devenu incontournable dans une partie
de la création contemporaine. Cette tendance s’insinue-elle dans l’esprit des artistes pour
répondre aux attentes du public ou du monde des Arts? (…) La création contemporaine peutelle trouver une résonance sans glamour? Ephemeral performance art, video, photographic
and digital works, installations and sculptures witness the evolution of the art works and the
interests of its different players, in a society that revolves more and more around seduction
and attraction.
Opening February 27 during Nuit Blanche à Montreal, the 2016 edition of ART
SOUTERRAIN will run until March 20, honouring, for three weeks, 63 works of 86 Canadian
and international artists, throughout thirteen buildings of the underground city. These
are made up of the Montreal Eaton Center, Complexe Les Ailes, Place Ville Marie, Gare
Centrale, 1000 de La Gauchetière, Place Bonaventure, Place de la Cité internationale-OACI,
hallway of the STM, Place Victoria, Centre de commerce mondial de Montréal, Centre CDP
Capital, Palais des Congrès de Montréal, Complexe Guy Favreau and Place des Arts.
Three circuits will be open to festival-goers, including the interactive route Point of view
presented by Ivanhoé Cambridge and their properties. Free access to the seven-kilometer
journey will be guided by arrows on the ground of the pathways. As well as the description placed next to each work, an audio guide will be available at no
cost on the site of ART SOUTERRAIN. This will allow visitors to live the unique experience of
hearing each artist explain their vision of the theme Must art be appealing ? and their
expression regarding the aesthetics of their practice.
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Art Souterrain, 8 edition | 27 February 27 to March 20, 2016, Montréal | www.artsouterrain.com
Média: Marie Marais | 514-845-2821 – [email protected]
For the first time, ART SOUTERRAIN will integrate into it’s programming, private and
public collections of works, usually destined for museums exhibitions. Going along with the
theme of the 2016 edition, these works were chosen among the classic of the modern
Quebecois era as well as today’s artists. The works of Nicolas Baier, Éliane Excoffier, Jérôme
Fortin, Guillaume Lachapelle, Nadia Myre, Guy Larramée, from the Collection Loto-Québec
will be presented at Place Ville Marie ; works from Louis Archambault, Gwenaël Bélanger,
Ulysse Comtois, Jacques Hurtubise, Denis Juneau, Alain Paiement, Claude Tousignant, from
la Banque d’art du Conseil des arts du Canada at Place Victoria and those of Mark
Jenkins, Takeshi Murata, Allison Schulnik, of l’Arsenal, presented at the Centre de
commerce mondial de Montréal.
For the first time in it’s history, the festival will be presenting a new satellite route which with
permit festival goers to proloing their artistic experience through ten Montreal cultural
partners. Les galeries Castiglione, ELLEPHANT, Joyce Yahouda, Art Mûr, Dazibao, Atelier
Circulaire, l’Arsenal, le Musée d’art Contemporain de Montréal, l’Espace Ubisoft and the
Goethe-Institut Montréal will present exibitions and activities that ecco the theme Must art be
appealing?
For the second time, ART SOUTERRAIN offers a guided visit of private art collections in
the office of the cabinet of lawyers of Norton Rose (March 14, 6:00pm), at the siège social de
la Banque Nationale du Canada (March 10, 6:30pm and at l’Arsenal (March 2, 6:00pm).
Every guided visit will be accompanied by a representative responsible for acquisitions.
More than thirty activities will be offered during the festival: during Nuit Blanche à
Montréal, from 6:00pm until 1:00am, a few hundred cultural mediators will be present in
different buildings to answer visitors’ questions ; three types of daily guided visits to better
understand the works presented along the underground site ; guided visits to artists’
workshops, Fred Laforge (March 9), Jean Brillant (march 3) and Doyon Rivest (march 24),
for a glass of win; a few Cinq à septs in the context of TD’s cultural Tuesdays of L’Arsenal
(Pre-openigng of the festival, February 26); round-table discussion on the theme, (March 8),
workshops for the entire family as well as creative workshops aimed towards school
groups.
The exposition path of the ART SOUTERRAIN Festival, presented from February 27 to March
20 2016 as well as the 5-7 at l’Arsenal is admissible free of charge.
Guided visits: 10$ (family and student discounts available)
Guided visit to artist workshops: 18$ | Guided visit of private collections: 20 $
A limited number of passes are available for 38$ at La Vitrine culturelle.
www.artsouterrain.com | facebook | instagram : artsouterrain | #festivalAS2016
Refer to the website for a detailed schedule and venues.
The graphic design of the 2016 edition of ART SOUTERRAIN was created by RAP. An
interdisciplinary agency engaged in the development of new and contemporary
approaches to design.
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Art Souterrain, 8 edition | 27 February 27 to March 20, 2016, Montréal | www.artsouterrain.com
Média: Marie Marais | 514-845-2821 – [email protected]
SOME OF THE ARTISTS OF THE 8TH EDITION OF ART SOUTERRAIN
La séduction peut tourner à la confrontation !
In sculpture/installation, Zeke Moores (Canada) is directly inspired by the decor of every day
life and uses it to question our outlook; Mark Jenkins (United States) plays with the
perception of reality to create a feeling of discomfort within the viewer, with his human-like
sculptures; the duo Jean-François Cooke and Pierre Sasseville (Canada) convenes the
ordinary and the mundane in their surrealist fabrications bringing social critique through
entertainment; Sarah Garzoni (France) opens a new sense of space as a last resort to
hybridization and to metamorphosis by placing focus on the worship of ego, to echo a selfcentred society concentrated on appearance; Jean Brillant (Québec) creates organic,
vegetal and mineral large format shapes which distinguish themselves by their provocative
mastery of insinuation and irony ; with his sphere composed of video surveillance cameras
and video monitors, Jonathan Schipper (United States) shows “transparent” via moving
images which move this massive object by short circuiting the traditional opposition between
opacity and transparency.
In Installation, Nathatlie Quagliotto (Canada) uses the seduction of fluorescent light as a
direct critique of the art world, all the while subtly treating the attraction of potential and doubt
; the collective Pierre et Marie (Québec) plays with the codes of furniture, of architecture and
design and injects a touch of marvellous while creating desirable objects with striking contrast
to generate emotion and provoke thought ; With 24 connected tables, used as an archetype
of communion and divided in opposing fractions, Michel de Broin (Québec) thwarts their
function and use that we take for granted ; By making interact the connections between the
virtual and real, the material and the intangible, resistance and fragility, Christos Pantieras
(Canada) questions the status of interpersonal communication in the digital age ; Through
their hyper-realistic works, Renato Garza Cervera (Mexico) uses humour to incite the viewer
to exercise a critical outlook and to re-examine a situation of every day life.
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Art Souterrain, 8 edition | 27 February 27 to March 20, 2016, Montréal | www.artsouterrain.com
Média: Marie Marais | 514-845-2821 – [email protected]
In photography, Dina Goldstein (Canada), holds an powerful outlook on modern romance, by
chipping away at the myths which she reinterprets with visual works of ironic and
metamorphic messages, we are invited to think of the human condition ; the strange qualities
of staged works, the poetry of images and sensible regard of Zhang Kechun (China), reveal
the reality of a ever growing China ; Jean-François Bouchard (Québec) disregards the
codes of classic portraits by transposing them, thus inviting us to question our self-imposed
stereotypes ; Holly King (Québec) creates photographic landscapes with miniature
maquettes, which analyse the tension between artifice and the plausible; with his canine
portraits, Martin Usborne (England) questions the relationship that keeps humans close with
animals, while inviting us to reconsider our attitude, all while searching to create a subtle
humoristic effect ; Ambroise Tézenas (France) captures, through wide angle photographs,
the growing interest for tourism that focuses on war and guided visits to historic locations with
a history of violence and death ; Erika De Freitas (Canada) puts herself on stage with her
mother using masks of death to combat her fear of abandonment ; With their series on the
sunset, the duo Inka and Niclas (Finland) questions the power that the stars of the solar
system exercise on our imagination and question our perception of reality.
In video, Allison Schulnik (United States) brings to life sculpted creatures, singular and
spectral, with exacerbated colors enveloped in thick matter, which take turns incarnating love,
death and the face of macabre ; Takeshi Murata (United States) plays with illusion and with
the organic distortion of our senses and the ambivalent issue of the advancement of new
technologies ; Jesper Just (Denmark) explores the sentiment of expectation, intimate
aspirations et viscerally disappearing desires.
THANK YOU --- ART SOUTERRAIN receives support from the Bureau des festivals et
événements culturels de la Ville de Montréal, the Arrondissement de Ville-Marie, the Conseil
des arts de Montréal, the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec, the Société de
développement des entreprises culturelles (SODEC), the Conseil des arts du Canada, the
Patrimoine canadien and from the Secrétariat à la région métropolitaine (Québec).
-30Press releases, press kit and high definition photos for editorial use are available for
download in the press section: http://www.artsouterrain.com th
Art Souterrain, 8 edition | 27 February 27 to March 20, 2016, Montréal | www.artsouterrain.com
Média: Marie Marais | 514-845-2821 – [email protected]