Centre
Artworks
→ PHI's art collection
- Art Collection
- Free
- Contemporary Art
PHI Centre
315 Saint-Paul St West
Montreal, Quebec, H2Y 2A3
Monday and Tuesday: 9 AM to 5 PM
Wednesday and Thursday: 9 AM to 7 PM
Friday: 9 AM to 9 PM
Saturday: 11 AM to 9 PM
Sunday: 11 AM to 7 PM
All ages
Free, no reservations required
Before visiting, please review some essential information about the visit, including details on accessibility at the Centre.
For more details on safety measures in place at the PHI Centre, visit our COVID-19 page.
An ongoing collection of contemporary artworks, accessible and free at the PHI Centre.
Selected by
The thinking behind the collection
Following our mission to bring art into our everyday lives, PHI is now displaying a selection of its ongoing collection of contemporary artworks on the ground floor of the PHI Centre, free and accessible to the public.
Titled Figure–Ground, the series has been carefully selected by Jon Knowles, Exhibitions Manager at the PHI Foundation.
The selection brings together several works from the PHI collection that explore the figure and the complex and intimate correlation it establishes with its background. For us, the figure is a point of reference to question, while its meaning is found in the relationship with its background: its context, the space that surrounds it, and its place in time.
Among these works, we see figures as silhouettes—bodies escaping the overburdening of their representation. Some sculptural pieces make the site of their exhibition their ground and call us to question the ground as a mode of display. Others use minimalist figures with the barest of elements to create symmetrical images that we understand right away, putting an emphasis instead on the cultural history and context that makes these figures at once recognizable.
In this collection, when the figure(s) and the ground are intertwined, they are in resonance, sometimes in harmony, and sometimes in counterpoint. Rather than simply seeing, they ask us to employ all of our senses, our perceptions of time and space, as well as our cultural and learned ideas about how we see and interpret representations.
Meet the artists
More Events at PHI
Free
Water Road
November 24 → July 10
The PHI Centre building comes to life with an interactive multimedia installation of a motion-activated river on its four-story windows on Saint-Pierre Street
Free
Terms of Use
March 9 → July 9
Terms of Use brings together works that explore the impact of technologies on the definition, construction, and (re)framing of individual and collective selves
Free
Self-Guided Tour – Quentin VerCetty: Missing Black Technofossils Here
March 9 → July 9
As part of the exhibition Terms of Use, Quentin VerCetty and the PHI Foundation for Contemporary Art invite you to take part in the Missing Black Technofossils Here augmented reality (AR) walking tour
Free
Nadège Grebmeier Forget: I WILL NEVER FINISH REMOVING ALL THESE FACES. (GUIDED REFLECTION)
March 16 → July 9
I WILL NEVER FINISH REMOVING ALL THESE FACES. (GUIDED REFLECTION) is a public engagement project conceived by Nadège Grebmeier Forget and presented in dialogue with the exhibition Terms of Use
FRAMERATE: Pulse of the Earth
March 22 → June 11
FRAMERATE: Pulse of the Earth is part of the Chaos & Memories exhibition
Taiwan Spotlight
March 22 → June 11
The Taiwan Spotlight is part of the Chaos & Memories exhibition
Last Chance
Chaos & Memories
March 22 → June 11
An exhibition comprising a British immersive installation and four award-winning Taiwanese virtual reality works that take us through personal, empirical and historical experiences
Limited Places
Guided Tours with the Curators – Terms of Use
March 25, April 29, May 27 and July 8
Daniel Fiset and Cheryl Sim, curators of the exhibition Terms of Use, will conduct four free guided tours for the general public