Rafael Lozano-Hemmer / Julian Rosefeldt: Manifesto / Françoise Sullivan

Large-scale interactive exhibitions and artist retrospectives will be featured in 2018 at the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal (MAC), with artists Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, Julian Rosefeldt and Françoise Sullivan.

With this programming, the MAC is pleased to continue to put forward “powerful and probing exhibitions that are a continuing manifestation of the Museum’s core commitment to presenting the most exciting and relevant homegrown and international art,” says John Zeppetelli, Director and Chief Curator.

Rafael Lozano-Hemmer
May 24 to September 9, 2018

More than a mid-career survey, the exhibition offers a new conceptual perspective on the artist’s work over the past decade, exploring its poetic and political dimensions from the standpoint of one of its central principles: the notion of co-presence. This concept refers first and foremost to the coexistence of voices, perspectives and singular experiences in Lozano-Hemmer’s works: to the interactions between strangers, to the situations elicited by the dialogic devices deployed by the work. However, co-presence also evokes other, more asymmetrical relationships, such as forced cohabitations and power relations, and speaks to the interplay of gazes and bodies subjected to contemporary techniques of surveillance and control.

The exhibition will present major works including the world premiere of Sphere Packing: Bach a spherical room fit with 1074 speakers each of which plays a different composition from Johann Sebastian Bach. The piece focuses the entire musical production of the composer in a single dense multi-channel structure that visitors can enter.

Subtitled Public (2005), Vicious Circular Breathing (2013), Pan-Anthem (2014), and Zoom Pavilion (a collaboration with Krzysztof Wodiczko, 2015) will also be featured in the exhibition.

Co-produced by the MAC and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA), the exhibition will be presented at the Museo de arte contemporáneo de Monterrey (MARCO), Mexico, from March to August 2019 and SFMOMA from April 25 to September 6, 2020.

Julian Rosefeldt
October 18, 2018 to January 20, 2019

Manifesto is an immersive video installation consisting of 13 large-screen projections standing as a tribute to the literary power of artistic manifestos. This artwork/event, which lies at the crossroads between film, performance and installation, gives the MAC’s audiences an opportunity to personally experience an important piece by a major artist whose work remains relatively little known.

Manifesto allows audiences to experience a series of scenes screened simultaneously showing us the same actor, Cate Blanchett in a breathtaking performance, taking on various roles. All of the monologues spoken—actually, the only words spoken in the piece—are formed out of various artistic manifestos published over the last 150 years or so. From schoolteacher to homeless man, the thirteen characters embodied by Blanchett pronounce the manifestos of Claes Oldenburg, Yvonne Rainer, Kazimir Malevich, André Breton, Elaine Sturtevant, Sol LeWitt and Jim Jarmusch, among others.

Manifesto has been mounted in more than a dozen cities around the world; its Montréal presentation will be only its second in North America, after the Park Avenue Armory in New York.

Françoise Sullivan
October 18, 2018 to January 20, 2019

This retrospective exhibition highlights the key role of artist Françoise Sullivan in the history of modern and contemporary art in Quebec. It’s a chance for visitors to discover or rediscover an artist whose major impact on Quebec and Canadian culture deserves to be more fully recognized.

In addition to presenting the artist’s diverse and multidisciplinary practice, the exhibition offers an in-depth exploration of some of the milestones in her career. The various styles and approaches adopted by Sullivan over the years are contextualized with the help of archival documents.

Information:
Roxane Dumas-Noël
Head of Public Relations
T +1 514 847-6232 / roxane.dumas-noel [​at​] macm.org