PHI Centre
Espace Rhino + Espace Plateau
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 8 pm
Saturday: 10 am to 8 pm
Sunday: 11 am to 7 pm
Admission is free, no reservation required
Before visiting, please review some essential information about the visit, including details on accessibility at the Centre.
To plan a school, community or corporate visit, go to our Group Visits page.
For more details on safety measures in place at the PHI Centre, visit our COVID-19 page.
A photo exhibition by Fabrizio Maltese.
For the first time in Canada, the CINEMANIA film festival and the PHI Centre present a comprehensive overview of Fabrizio Maltese's work as a portrait photographer and documentary filmmaker.
Fabrizio has imagined for each location a different experience that will allow visitors to discover his craft as a photographer, which is totally connected and inseparable from that of a filmmaker.
Discover Up Close, a world premiere photo exhibition featuring 20 works. With this series, Fabrizio travels the reverse path of the photographic process of his celebrity portraits, starting from a photo that has already been taken over time and consequently hypermediatized in order to re-appropriate it and make it become, through a manual and analogue process, a unique object.
In today's world, we are surrounded by images. The evolution of technology has made access to photography more democratic and, thanks to electronic media, photos are more omnipresent than ever.
The desire for images has grown exponentially, which has driven both the production and the consumption of photos to unprecedented heights.
Social networks have made it possible to share photos at the speed of light and without limits. Celebrities (and their reputations) are never safe, since smartphones and selfie sticks are everywhere.
As a result, they may struggle to control their image, just as professional photographers struggle to control and protect the dissemination and reproduction of their content.
The exhibition Up Close stems from a reflection on these themes and times. It seeks to comment on the hyper-distribution, hypermediatization and hyper-consumption of images around us.
The exhibition also comments about the control that photographers have—or don’t have—over their own work once their images have entered into the digestive tract of mass consumption, and it explores the meaning of the image of a movie star outside of a cinematic context.
Up Close takes these choices further not only in the moment the picture is taken, when it is decided which elements to highlight or eliminate from reality, but also by altering these elements after the picture is taken. By playing with an existing image and then transforming it.
The author thereby takes back the ownership of one of their own images, which has been made public by the media, and has a chance to reinterpret it in a unique way and to limit its distribution in a very controlled fashion.
Up Close is a series of images, 56x76 cm, cyanotype tinted with green tea Yerba mate on fine art paper, creating unique pieces.
Italian-born, Luxembourg-based Fabrizio Maltese is a documentary filmmaker and an award winning photographer.
His celebrity portraits have graced the covers of magazines including The Hollywood Reporter, GQ, Sight & Sound, Rolling Stone, Studio Ciné Live and many others.
His distinctive portraits have been showcased in numerous solo exhibitions around the world, including a recent retrospective on his work as photographer and filmmaker organized earlier this year by the Cinémathèque in Macau.
As a stills photographer, he has worked on some twenty European arthouse films.
As a director, cinematographer and producer, he made five documentary features to date: Twenty-Five Palms (2015), 50 Days in the Desert (2016), California Dreaming (2019), I fiori persi (Lost Flowers)(2021), L’invitation (The Invitation) (2022).
Centre
Four VR works to discover that were produced or co-produced by Luxembourg
Centre
Four VR works to discover that were produced or co-produced by Luxembourg
Free
Centre
The PHI Centre showcases a light installation with evolving content, adapting to the seasons and exhibitions
Limited Places
Centre
An immersive experience that traces the story of Claudette Colvin and her fight for civil rights in 1950s Alabama
Limited Places
Centre
An interactive virtual reality adventure that takes audiences back to the heyday of the UK’s illegal Acid House rave scene of the late 1980’s
Dolby Atmos Mix
Centre
Tune out outside noise and immerse yourself in one of Montreal's only spatial audio listening rooms. The artists: Dominique Fils-Aimé, Michael Gary Dean, SlowPitchSound and Tanya Tagaq
Off-Site Location
The immersive experience Horizon of Khufu, presented in the Old Port, is a unique VR expedition to discover the wonders of Egypt
Free
Centre
A monthly gathering of live performances where art comes to life
Centre
Come celebrate Forward Music Group's 16th anniversary at the PHI Centre, featuring Backward Music artists Sarah Pagé, Nick Schofield and Charbonneau/Amato
Album Launch Show
Centre
The multidisciplinary artist presents the minimal pop and electronic sounds of her first solo project, Les manières de table