Art Reviews: Montreal, New York, Your Town.

I thought it could be fun to start this thread by attempting to retrace the first
exhibition I ever saw. It`s not that hard of a task. I was born with Asperger syndrome (nothing that affect intellectual quotient, don`t worry), so the first few years in my life were rather numbed, and the memories I got from them are rather ackward, like the details of wallpapers, or an intuition of how the space of my family apartment was built (my mom was surprised one day that I draw her the architecture of our first apartment, what she thought was impossible cos I was 2 years old and banging my head against the bedwall).

By age 4, we moved from Montreal to remote Lasarre in Abitibi-Témiscamingue,
where I stayed 6 years (4 to 9 years old). We rarely ever moved from there,
only to come to Montreal each Christmas where we stayed a few days, time
to meet family and see a couples movies (Star Wars !).

Now, around that time I`m not sure they were any facilities for art in Lasarre, and if they were, we were the last one to care, living near the woods and much more leaned toward exterior activities. My first contact to anything artistic might have been the water-paint murals in which I participated in pre-school classes. But I don`t remember taking part or being present in any school-organized exhibitions around that era. The stuff we did in class was pure "leisure activity" and about bringing gifts to mom and dad.

I remember vaguely entering a church basement event where the people
exhibited cakes, in some sort of concourse. I remember spotting a giant blue cake and I was criying cos I so wanted to eat it, and because of this it was merely the first and last and only thing I ever saw in that space before I was took away (remind me to curate an artshow about cakes...now that is one pertinent art proposal).

Same goes with the famous "Tombola", an attraction parc that travelled each
year to our city in summer (called "Rotary", If I`m not mistaken). We used to have to walk across across a long "passage" in the annexed "Colisée De Lasarre" in which were exhibiting many companies designing furnishments or homeware
materials and technologies. But of course all I would do was
pulling whoever I was with so that we walked as fast as possible to the attraction parc itself. And if there was ever a first important visual impact
memory in my life, apart from some early comic reading or the usual childhood impressions of horror and adventure cinema, it was this attraction parc. Admittedly, on a pure biaised aesthetic level, I think I very rarely saw something as visually impressive than the scape of an attraction parc at night, except perhaps the damn stars themselves, or the animals in a zoo (that would come soon later), or the even sea.

But the first official art exhibit I ever saw, I remember it pretty well.
It was in Winter 1979, and I was exposed to it through a class visit (we used to just slide on mountains), but then I
returned with my parents because it was "the talk of the town", and I so wanted to look at it again. The show was simply a travelling show of Giant Dolls, touring as such an official activity promoting the "Children Year" (which was 1979). In Lasarre it stopped at the Colisée, and frankly, I remember a square space where we would be surrounded by those tall dolls, sitting on benches in groups, as if scrutinizing our reactions. They were mostly made of
tissues and wool, but I can`t remember the artist who made them (I`m pretty sure this was the work of eitheir one single artist, or a collective working altogether...it wasn`t sparse a show even though the dolls varied in format and style:they all were made with similar materials).

I wrote this page quite from the top of my head, but there is a chance I could
retrace a pamphlet about this at my mother`s home. I remember we kept something about it.

At any rates, that show was going to change my life, even though
I only truly started witnessing the contemporary art scene in Montreal circa 1984-1985.

That same year, 1979, we managed our first family trip across the United States during the Summer, where I did enter and observed various institutions of peculiar kinds (zoos and aquariums, wax museums, science museums, Disney World,etc...).

Even prior to the development of my interest for art, there would be
a whole list to enumerate of the sort of "family museums and establishments" I visited early across Canada and United State.

Maybe some other day........

I`m testing this.

Preparing Myself for "Nuit Blanche" in Montreal.
Saturday the 28th (February) you are able to
visit a few museums and participate in many
activities across town (parties, skating, cinema,etc)
all through the night. Start from Place-Des-Arts
and travel from there, buses are available.