VoCA reports from Montreal. So far, we recommend:

Stan Douglas, Klatsassin Portraits (Prisoner) 2006. Image: davidzwirner.com

1. Stan Douglas: Klatsassin at Quartier Ephemere

Vancouver artist Stan Douglas’s installation comprises a 70-minute long film with a number of corresponding photographs next door. There are three black and white, vintage looking portraits of cowboys and Indians (actually the actors in the film) alongside a number of images that are of, or refer to 19th century Canadian Gold Rush mountain camps.

Stan Douglas, Still from Klatsassin, 2006. Image: davidzwirner.com

The film is a cowboy film that adopts the narrative structure of Akira Kurosawa’s legendary film Rashomon (1950). As curator Marie Fraser says, though, Douglas’s film “develops…in the manner of a musical score, with five levels of narration that interrupt and overlay one another.

Like Rodney Graham’s work, the viewer is unable to follow a narrative arc, as the piece presents various ‘solutions’ to the story that flow back upon themselves.

Also, from September 15, 2007 until January 6, 2008, the Württembergische Kunstverein and the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart will be presenting a comprehensive exhibition of the works of Stan Douglas.

2. Salla Tykka: Zoo at Espaces Video/Video Rooms

There is much to see at the Espaces Video/Video Rooms, including work by Mike Hoolboom, Eve. K. Tremblay and Althea Thauberger, but best is the Finnish artist Salla Tykka’s film Zoo. The piece follows a Hitchockian blonde through a zoo as she surveys and photographs various animals. The scene is intercut with another of a violent-seeming aquatic rugby match. A Hitchcock-style soundtrack and superb camerawork makes the piece even more riveting.

Salla Tykka, Zoo, 2006. Image: e-flux.com

3. Eve Sussman: The Rape of the Sabine Women, atParisian Laundry

If you like extremely well-produced, large-scale colour photography in the manner of Gregory Crewdson, Jeff Wall and others, you will like the new work by Carlos and Jason Sanchez at Parisian Laundry.

Downstairs, don’t miss Eve Sussman’s seductive 2006 film The Rape of the Sabine women, a 1960s cocktail-party style re-interpretation of the Roman legend of the abduction of the Sabine women, as depicted by Jacques-Louis David’s 1799 painting.

Eve Sussman, The Rape of the Sabine Women, 2006.
Photo: Benedikt Partenheimer/Image: nyfa.org