Nuit Blanche

I’m psyched about Montreal’s Nuit Blanche this weekend. I am planning on seeing as much as I can. Here’s Saturday night’s hectic schedule:

7pm:  First stop, a dinner reservation at Le Balmoral, a non-profit restaurant for which all surplus revenue goes to helping finance the Jazz Fest.  

8pm:  Starting at 8pm, Bran Van 3000 will play at Quartier des Spectacles. (Oh my, years ago I had such a Bran Van phase – I’m really looking forward to this show.) It’s free, people! Don’t miss out! After Bran Van, we’ll be jetting off to the Belgo and doing a quick tour of the galleries. And by quick, I mean that at....

10pm:  We’ll be heading down to Art Souterrain, where we plan on getting lost in an incredible maze of art. On the top of my list? I want to catch De A à C, an artistic project held at the ARTVstudio. Maybe I'll get my picture taken with Antoine Tavaglione’s Richman. While walking through the Art Souterrain site, I’ll be trying to spot the forty miniature portraits Sylvie Cloutier scattered across the site. (An art hunt? Count me in!)

12am:  Next stop? Mathieu Grenier’s Le cube blanc (O’Doherty). Viewers can meet the artist between midnight and one.

1am:  Catching a free subway ride, we’ll finish off at DHC/ART, open until 2am.

Gallery-hopping

Last night, The Kikster and I had an evening of gallery-hopping planned out. Here are the highlights:  

1. OPUS, by José Toirac

Imagine this: you walk into a room and are faced with a black screen on which numbers appear, voiced over by Fidel Castro. There you have it: the conceptual work Opus, by Cuban artist José Toirac presented at DHC Art. For this piece, Toirac edited a speech given by Castro in 2003, leaving only the portions where numbers were mentioned. I thought it was a good comment on politics, on our media, and on our tendency to reduce human life to mere numbers.

If you have never visited DHC Art – I urge you to do so. Opus was one of many fabulous works on display. Chronicles of a Disappearance will continue until May 13, 2012.

2. SANTOS, tapas bar

In an attempt to find refuge from the cold, we fell upon the exquisitely designed tapas restaurant Santos. It was the perfect setting for our long winded debate regarding “commercial” art versus “university-derived-slash-intellectual” art. We did a nauseating amount of artist-name dropping, and it was delightful!

3. BGL, at Parisian Laundry

I adore contemporary art. A black canvas: yes! A urinal re-baptized Fountain: sure! A taxidermy dog biting on a lace thong: bring it on! But sometimes, I just don’t get it. And you know what? That’s OK.