Christian Marclay - The Clock

I've only been waiting for this piece to come to Montreal for four years. Now the time has come to feast our eyes on the TWENTY-FOUR hour extravaganza of Christian Marclay's The Clock.  After years of tireless research with several assistants, Marclay meticulously edited clips of clocks and watches from movies and television to create a single channel video that demarcates the marching of time.  So when you, the viewer, are sitting in a comfy seat and that shot above pops onto the screen, you can rest assured that it is indeed one o'clock. Just like a Swiss watch...albeit a cinematic version.

The National Gallery of Canada and the Museum of Fine Arts Boston jointly owned piece has been gracing the screen of the Musee d'art contemporain de Montréal as of last week (!), and will be tick tocking until April (phew...) So don't wait too long, this is hotly anticipated not only by yours truly, but by plenty of other cine-art-nerds.

Pssst... tonight is Nuit Blanche....and it's screening all night for free...shhhhh...don't tell anyone!

Nuit Blanche 2013

Sorry it's been a bit quiet on the blog side, I'll try to make it up with this post from this year's edition of the art-fun-all-night-long of Nuit Blanche!  While we wanted to hit up many of the venues from last year's romp, the flow of the evening took us to other spaces and places and empanadas.  Among the throngs and crowds of parties and hoe downs, many textures caught my eye.  This is what I share with you.

Look up! At the RVCQ's closing party a jam packed sweaty crowd took in the sounds of Artist of the Year.  Suspended above were geometric ice cave shapes that provided atmosphere in at the Cinématèque québécoise.

The backside of a giant Tava cut out at the Milky Way exhibit at ARTVstudio

Looking into the void, Ici a neon installation by Baillat Cardell & Fils

Look up! The ceiling at Place des Arts

DJAB x En Masse

Your favourite art collective and mine (with love here), En Masse have been getting busy.  In fact they've been blowing up since their giant coming out party during Nuit Blanche that February of 2009.  More recently, members of the collective have returned to lend their artistic hands to La Maison Simons' streetwear division DJAB for their spring 2013 campaign.  Given the direction of a Japanime/manga smorgasbord, the artists veered from their characteristic black and white images to throw down a very colourful mural.

a composite of the mural (can you see the seam?)

RRAWR! Godzilla battle for Tokyo

Not quite Hello Kitty

Treeline

Detail: steady hands, steady circles

Anyone remember the DJAB Escape Artist series?  It was a limited edition series of t-shirts designed by serveral grafitti/lowbrow/street artists back in 2008.  Many of these artists have also contributed their talent on En Masse walls. It all comes full circle sometimes...

Nuit Blanche 2012

Nuit Blanche! We got the "art-all-night-long" troops assembled chez nous and my friend Tim of Original Heads Agency (they're working on a website, no links yet!) showed up in this trompe oeil puffer.  Tim takes care of the marketing and brand management for the Adidas Skate China team and got hooked up with the Adidas Blue beauty, a debate ensued on the yellow zipper though...

First stop: The Canadian Centre for Architecture for some drawing, drinks and musical fun.

The current show is called Imperfect Health: The Medicalization of Architecture an awesomely intriguing show, that has been on my list for a while, I have until April 1 to get my CCA on! 

Fun-all-night-long team member Shabana got straight down to drawing on the communal tables littered with markers. Shabana drew a bundled up character-appropriate for the chilly evening. My contribution was a fat marker tip line splotches. Yeah!

Some awesome visuals were created the analog way with scratching out designs on acetate and an overhead projector.  I met Mathieu of Organ Mood and I told him I loved his old school imagery.

Next stop: Palais de Congres for some Art Souterrain in which there were kilometers of art to be experienced.  Well we limited our visit to the Palais and we took in the distorted vision of Mathieu Grenier's Dans le cube blanc and the disease-like balloon sculpture of Padejo's Air Borne 3 in the pink trees.

Onwards team!

So the SAT had a dj and vj line up in the Satosphère, where the visuals just BLEW.MY. MIND.  The dome enables an immersive visual experience, allowing for perception of depth.  There was a temporary lapse of a projector showing it's start up screen, but it gave a good idea of the layout of the projectors.

Above are some images when Beat Market took the stage and VJs Zef & Santo gave us some awesome visual stimulation.

Then 3am rolled around...we had poutine...oh man.