Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal

In the spirit of trying new things, after work today I went to the Museum of Contemporary Art. A lot of the art is very modern, and most of the artists exhibited are still alive today. Very modern usually equals very weird, and this was no exception.

The best thing they had was an exhibit called "Music Video" (original, eh?) which showed 26 of the best music videos of the last 20 or so years, with "Bohemian Rhapsody" being the first. It was really interesting to see how the video has evolved. The cool thing about it was the setup: a huge screen in an large, pitch dark, empty room with only a few directors' chairs set up. Very minimalistic.

One weird thing was the tour guide: she was maybe 25-28, French, but gave the tour in English. She said her in-laws were from England. This explained a lot of things, cause while she had a bit of a Quebecois accent, for the most part she had a distinct British accent (like when she said "New York"). Never heard that before... very interesting. Oh ya, and she was hot. Like, HOT... 1234 HOT. Yay Montreal.

Unfortunately, I couldn't take any pictures, so I'll do my best to explain some of the coolest things I saw:

• 2 large miniature rooms made of a wood frame and insulation each rotating on their central axis. Each of these rooms had windows that you could look in and see an empty room with white walls, light fixtures, and a dirty blue carpet. The artist, Samuel Roy-Bois, wants to show how architecture governs our entire lives, and how it forces us down certain paths in our travels (a.k.a. psycho).
• Air Jordans cut up and formed into 23 "masks" that resemble First Nations art. This was really cool since they some had human hair, and each mask had it's own "personality." The artist, Brian Jungen, is apparently fascinated with commercial consuption and misperception... hence the Air Jordans and the stereotypes attached to First Nations people.
• 3 whale skeletons made completely of plastic lawn chairs. Jungen likes to use regular every day things in his art. Also, since plastic is made from petrolium, and oil essentially comes from whale fossils (or that's what the exhibit said), it's supposed to show some sort of weird connection between the two.

Overall it was a great visit and I really enjoyed trying something new. Being alone, it was also a nice break from everything, and it gave me a good opportunity to take my time and really get the most out of it.


The Museum with the Wilfrid-Pelletier theatre behind it.