
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
Fondation PHI
451 & 465 Saint-Jean Street
Montréal, Québec H2Y 2R5
Wednesday to Sunday:
11 AM to 6 PM
Free admission
Since the late 1980s, Belgian artist Wim Delvoye has been challenging the art world status quo through a multidisciplinary practice that includes sculpture, drawing, photography, installation, and video. Montreal audiences were first introduced to his work in 2009 through the presentation of Cloaca No. 5 at the Galerie de l’UQAM. Part of a larger series, this provocative machine/sculptural work reproduced the human digestive system whereby food was processed and transformed into waste matter. This initiation into Delvoye’s œuvre offered insight into his examination of consumerism and his critique of our intensely capitalist society. At DHC/ART, a major presentation of recent sculpture, drawing, and video will take us deeper into his study of a range of related topics, including branding, class, the economy, technology, and globalisation.
The works on display at DHC/ART underscore Delvoye’s distinctive strategy of employing fusion and torsion to re-signify and de-contextualize a range of objects, symbols, and icons. In the series Car Tyre (2011), the status of the lowly rubber tire is elevated to that of precious objet d’art after its utilitarian surface has been painstakingly hand carved with ornamental designs. Twisted Dump Truck (2011) is formed out of stainless steel that has been laser cut with an intricate, Gothic pattern; the twisting of its body further de-stabilizes a reading of the truck’s semantic and physical unity. Sculptural works based on forgotten, neo-gothic statues, such as La Pêche Clockwise (2011) and La Pêche Counterclockwise (2011), are also re/deformed into tornados of sumptuous nickled-bronze to disrupt established ideas and liberate interpretations. DHC/ART will also present a selection of Delvoye’s renowned tattooed pigskins. This project, which caused an outcry among animal rights activists, cleverly amalgamates the conceits of art collecting, the lowly rank of the pig, and the notoriety of tattoos to raise questions about class, value, and craft.
As we are immersed into Delvoye’s world, binary relationships such as sacred/profane, use/value, high/low culture, and traditional/modern begin to emerge. But rather than remaining polemical, Delvoye’s work suggests an elaboration of meanings, where contradictory notions can coexist in a kind of exquisite harmony, or in what he has termed ’emulsions’. The conceptual chemistry, sense of humour, aesthetic juxtapositions, and affecting physicality of Wim Delvoye’s work deliver an astute critique that has the power to provoke a deeper reflection into our relationship with the panoply of systems, hierarchies, and discourses that shape and affect our contemporary condition.
Wim Delvoye
Born in 1965 in Wervik, Wim Delvoye lives and works in Ghent, Belgium. Recent solo exhibitions include large surveys at MUDAM in Luxembourg; The Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art, Iran; The Pushkin State Museum, Moscow; The Musée du Louvre, Paris; Musée Rodin, Paris; BOZAR, Brussels; The Guggenheim Collection, Venice; The New Museum, New York; and The Power Plant, Toronto. Delvoye’s work has also been displayed in large-scale group exhibitions, such as Documenta IX; the 1999 Venice Biennale; Triennale di Milano; Yokohama Triennale; 3rd Moscow Biennale; CAPC Musée de Bordeaux; Lyon Biennale; MOCA Shanghai; MoMA PS1; The Vancouver Art Gallery; and The Grand Palais in Paris.
Free
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
An ongoing collection of contemporary artworks, accessible and free at the PHI Centre
Free
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
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
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
The Taiwan Spotlight is part of the Chaos & Memories exhibition
An exhibition comprising a British immersive installation and four award-winning Taiwanese virtual reality works that take us through personal, empirical and historical experiences
FRAMERATE: Pulse of the Earth is part of the Chaos & Memories exhibition