CMCP - Nicolas Baier: Pareidolias

Since the early 1990s, Montreal artist Nicolas Baier has been challenging photographic convention with his elaborately constructed digital imagery. This intriguingly titled exhibition features a selection of large photographic works that represent the artist’s most recent production. The word “pareidolia” refers to the practice of ascribing an image, a meaning or a name to phenomena despite the absence of any true correlation; for instance, the game of transforming clouds into other objects. It is a way of looking at things that opens the mind and extends the imagination. With the works in the exhibition, Baier invites us all to play along.

Organized by the Musée régional de Rimouski, the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art, the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, and circulated by the Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography.

Presented by Pratt & Whitney Canada

Catalogue available

Image: Nicolas Baier, Vanitas (detail), 2007–2008. Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography, Ottawa

19th-Century French Photographs from the National Gallery of Canada

Drawn from the National Gallery’s extensive collection of 19th-century French photographs, this exhibition consists of daguerreotypes and salted paper, albumen silver and photogravure prints. It features over 100 photographs made by some of the major practitioners working in France at the time, including work by Eugène Atget, Édouard Baldus, Maxime Du Camp, Gustave Le Gray, Nadar, Auguste Salzmann, and Félix Teynard,among others.

Catalogue available, thanks to support from The Dr. Shirley L. Thomson Art Research Endowment, National Gallery of Canada Foundation.

Image: Félix-Jacques-Antoine Moulin, Académie, c. 1845. National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa. Gift of Phyllis Lambert, Montreal, 1988

Ottawa Collects Edward Burne-Jones

The Pre-Raphaelite painter Edward Burne-Jones had a profound influence on the Symbolist generation of the 1890s. During his lifetime, he was recognized internationally for the dreamy, mystical look of his models and a style of rhythmic, curvilinear lines. A number of private collectors in the city, including the artist’s great-great grandson,have generously agreed to lend works to this exhibition to be joined by works in the National Gallery’s collection.

Image: Edward Burne-Jones, Ethel Burdet-Burgess (Study for the Central Figure in “The Garden Court” of the Briar Rose Series), c. 1888. Private Collection, Ottawa

Maurice Denis: Journeys

Maurice Denis was a member of the Nabis group of painters. Influenced by Catholic subjects and images of Italy, Denis illustrated many books, including classic works by poet Paul Verlaine and novelist André Gide. His mastery of line and colour is demonstrated in these sensuous lithographs and woodcuts.

Image: Maurice Denis, Le voyage d'Urien (Paris: Librairie de l’art indépendant, 1893). National Gallery of Canada Library and Archives, Ottawa

Hours: The Library is open to the public Wednesday to Friday 10 am to 4:45 pm, Thursdays (October 1 to April 29) until 5:45 pm.

Part II: Rethinking Abstraction from an Indigenous Perspective

This series of exhibitions presents works by celebrated artists such as Alex Janvier and Kenojuak Ashevak, whose expressive use of colour, line and form communicate their political, social and cultural concerns. Drawn from the NGC collection, the series presents abstract and modernist work produced by Indigenous artists in Canada and abroad, from the 1960s to the present.

Image: Bob Boyer, Indian Psychology 101, 1997. National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa. Photo © NGC

General Idea. One Year of AZT

This installation renders in high relief the drug AZT that is prescribed to HIV-positive patients to delay the onset of AIDS. The pills are arranged on the wall in daily, monthly, and yearly dosages, the composition recalling both the calendar and the efficient look of pharmaceutical packaging. The Toronto-based collective General Idea - AA Bronson, Felix Partz and Jorge Zontal - created a profound body of work in response to the HIV/AIDS crisis until 1994, when Partz and Zontal were lost to the disease.

Image: One Year of AZT, 1991 and One Day of AZT, 1991. National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa. Photo © NGC.

Indigenous Art Collection

The Indigenous art collection comprises works by Aboriginal artists in Canada and Indigenous artists from around the world. Many of the works demonstrate ongoing links to the ancestral visual traditions of the past as they engage in the social, political and theoretical discourses that inform much of the art produced today. These works are integrated in chronological, thematic and monographic installations throughout the Canadian, Indigenous and Contemporary art galleries.

Image: Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun. Tweaker, 2008, NGC, Ottawa. Photo © NGC

Contemporary Art Collection

The contemporary art collection is the beating heart of the National Gallery of Canada and offers visitors a rich and varied encounter with the best Canadian and international works in sculpture, painting, video, film, drawing, printmaking and installation produced over the past three decades.

Engaging with living artists, the contemporary collection represents current trends in the art world while continuing to build upon and create relationships to the museum’s historical works. As one of Canada’s foremost institutions to experience contemporary art, the gallery is a site for exchange, debate and contemplation.

Image: Liz Magor Hollow, 1998-1999 National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa