Liz Magor. Habitude / Lizzie Fitch and Ryan Trecartin: Priority Innfield

The Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal (MAC) is proud to present an exhibition devoted to one of the most influential Canadian artists of her generation, Liz Magor. Habitude, as well as the installation Priority Innfield by the young American artists Lizzie Fitch and Ryan Trecartin. Both exhibitions will run until September 5, 2016.

Liz Magor: Examining the human condition through material
Canadian artist Liz Magor is unquestionably one of the most important artists of her generation. Liz Magor. Habitude is a non-chronological survey, the most ambitious ever presented, that brings together at the MAC sculptures and installations produced over the last 40 years. It sheds light on the recurring themes, emotional range and materials explored by the artist, enabling visitors to observe her judicious assembling of objects of everyday life, which gives rise to a disturbing feeling of absence. Shifting between the intimate and the monumental, the works on view illustrate the scope of a practice “whose concerns include interior psychological states of addiction and desire, of compulsion and consumption as well as and how meaning is constructed through material forms and objects,” observes John Zeppetelli, Director and Chief Curator of the Musée.

Magor demonstrates a conceptual rigour which she combines with an intense investigation of materials. The show reveals the conceptual and formal aspects of the work of this remarkable artist, with very recent pieces displayed alongside others from earlier in her career. Co-curators Lesley Johnstone and Dan Adler state: “It’s remarkable given the diversity of materials—everything from twigs to tweeds, from chocolate to cigarettes—that Magor has maintained the same level of procedural rigour and conceptual complexity for more that 40 years.”

Organization and co-production
The curators of the exhibition are Lesley Johnstone, Curator and Head of Exhibitions and Education at the MAC, and Dan Adler, Guest Curator and Professor at York University in Toronto.

Coproduction between the MAC, the Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Zurich, and the Kunstverein in Hamburg.

Lizzie Fitch and Ryan Trecartin: Priority Innfield
Young American artists Lizzie Fitch and Ryan Trecartin are among the most iconic artists of their generation who, according to John Zeppetelli, “chart with great dexterity and courage new social and aesthetic territories.” Since meeting in 2000, the two artists have employed video, sculpture, sound and installation to brashly address the changing nature of interpersonal relationships brought about by technology and social media. The resulting works present a potential vision of the future where our sense of place in the world is determined by an increasingly difficult to navigate set of factors. As Trecartin says: “I love the idea of technology and culture moving faster than the understanding of those mediums by people.”

The MAC is presenting the North American premiere of Priority Innfield, a “sculptural theatre” composed of four movies, each projected in its own pavilion. These movies—Junior War, Comma Boat, CENTER JENNY and Item Falls (all from 2013)—each represent a chapter in a pseudo-science-fiction narrative that relates a history of future civilizations inspired by an inventive recasting of the theories of evolution. Comprising sequences filmed by Trecartin in the 1990s when he was still in high school, Junior War documents the excesses of adolescence and serves as a prologue to the series. In Comma Boat, Trecartin casts himself as a dictatorial filmmaker ineffectively directing an apathetic cast. CENTER JENNY and Item Falls showcase students (all called Jenny) learning about the “human past” while aspiring to climb the rungs of society.

Organization and partnership
Exhibition organized by the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal and co-produced with the Zabludowicz Collection, London. Priority Innfield was produced and presented at the 55th Venice Biennale in 2013 and the Zabludowicz Collection, London, in 2014. The presentation at the MAC is organized by Mark Lanctôt, curator at the MAC.