Cloche

The Musée d’art de Joliette takes art to the outdoors with recent work from artist Penelope Stewart. Cloche, presented exclusively on the site of the amphitheatre during the Festival de Lanaudière, consists of a pair of giant photographs showing an oversized bell jar literally encompassing nature. Installed back to back in the wooded area leading to the amphitheatre, the photographs create an optical illusion of “architectural folly.”

Sit Your Sorry Asses Down

The MAJ presents Sit Your Sorry Asses Down, the latest work by the British-born artist Adrian Norvid. Enshrining ruptures and breaking with convention, this work plunges the visitor into an unbelievable world.The idiom, echoing the Southern rock and roll rock spirit of the 1970s, is displayed in a Georgian-interior – the English neo-classic style fashionable in the 18th and 19th centuries.The scene takes place the morning after a heavy drinking party, and we surprise the guests asleep at the tables. But this scene is in movement. Caught in the updraft from the stairway, the table napkin is being swept away, dragging along with it the cutlery and dishes.

The Lovers of Beaubourg

The Lovers of Beaubourg is a digital animation by the American-Korean group YOUNG-HAE CHANG HEAVY INDUSTRIES commissioned by the Centre Pompidou in 2007 to celebrate its 30th anniversary. The artists were inspired by the inaugural exhibition of the Center in 1977 dedicated to Marcel Duchamp.

Cabinet

Lyne Lapointe’s Cabinet series is inspired from the German Expressionist film The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920) with its painted stylized sets, distorted perspective and strange buildings and from the cabinets of curiosities of the 18th century, the forerunners of the modern museum. This exhibition is organized in collaboration with the Société des médecins de l’Université de Sherbrooke.

Portraits from the MAJ’s Collection

This thematic exhibition features more than 60 portraits from the Musée’s collection. Both original in its conception and telling in its presentation, it surveys the different approaches to the genre and its development from the 17th century onward by emphasizing the expression of the eyes of the portrayed subjects.

French Artists and the Netherlandish Tradition

This exhibition brings together works from the exceptional collection of the Agnes Etherington Art Centre, which has the largest holdings of 17th century Dutch painting in Canada. Featuring 26 carefully selected works by world-renowned artists, it demonstrates the influence of what is known as the Dutch Golden Age on many French artists of the 19th century.

With the Voices of the Other

This major exhibition of the contemporary Portuguese artist Vasco Araújo features four videos. Meditating on the theme of identity and dealing with issues of citizenship and territorial belonging, they invite the viewer to reflect on questions of justice, ethics and equality amongst people. With the Voices of the Other is the first solo exhibition of a contemporary Portuguese artist ever to be presented in this country.

Heaven’s Gate (after Stockhausen)

Heaven’s Gate (after Stockhausen) is a brilliant work created by Gisele Amantea, exclusively for the Musée d’art de Joliette, as part of the Wall to Wall series. The artist took her inspiration for this work from the design of the wroughtiron gates that used to stand at the entrance of the seigniorial manor house of Mascouche and are now on permanent display in the entrance hall of the Musée.

A Spider’s Logic

This retrospective exhibition brings together 17 major works by Chinese-Canadian artist Kai Chang. Spanning 35 years, these works, which have never been seen together before, reveal the artist’s extraordinary conceptual and formal range and bring to light his very personal manner of observing the natural and the built environment.

Centuries of Images

Centuries of Images, the Musée’s permanent exhibition, explores past and present art. Featuring 95 works from its collection, it charts the key moments in the development of the culture of the image once it ceased playing a religious role.

Tangible Memory

Tangible Memory features several highly original works by a young Lanaudière artist.

Totem : A North Americain Celebration

This exhibition of the artist Serge Emmanuel Jongué, who died last June, presents a series of colour photographs of Haida totem poles. In the tradition of the Northwest Coast Native People of Canada, the erection of totem poles serves to attribute emblems to different clans. Totem poles’ forms and symbols also record family history and … Continued

The Photographer’s Intuition

Produced by the Musée d’art de Joliette, this exhibition brings together 12 sequences of photographs of humans and animals in motion by the Britishborn American artist Eadweard Muybridge, an important figure in the history of 19th-century photography, known primarily for his photographic analyses of movement. These 12 collatypes from the Musée d’art de Joliette’s collection … Continued

Sequential Portraits

The exhibition Eric Simon: Sequential Portraits pivots on two axes: the portrait as the result of a process of observation and identification, and the portrait as a representation of feelings. The spectator is faced with four series of oil portraits, each of which is made up of 16 images laid out in a horizontal strip, … Continued

H.C.A (History of the Contemporary Artist)

This exhibition presents more than one hundred acrylic-on-wood paintings of different sizes in an audacious style combining what the artist calls “trash” – a term amalgamating tragedy, absurdity and humour – and caricature. In this satiric treatment of a contemporary artist’s story, Marie-Claude Pratte uncovers the underpinnings of the art establishment and questions the aesthetic … Continued

Four Questions Surrounding the Decorative in Quebec Art

The exhibition Décoratif! Décoratifs?, presented at the Musée d’art de Joliette from September 23, 2007 to January 6, 2008, focuses on the qualities associated with the term “decorative” in the field of the arts. Some sixty works selected from the collections of the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec enable the public to explore four … Continued

A Terrible Beauty: To Have and To Hold

Jennifer Angus is a Canadian artist celebrated for her installations, in which visitors discover arrangements of insects pinned to the walls. Her artistic approach is a fascinating fusion of visual art and decorative art that forces us to reconsider our cultural perceptions of shapes and patterns. Using a trompe-l’oeil technique, her installations, like tapestries, display … Continued

Vision in the Absence of Sight

Through an assortment of both historical and contemporary artworks, the exhibition Voir/Noir, presented at the Musée d’art de Joliette from September 23 to December 30, 2007, investigates the way in which vision operates when sight is taken away. Variations in light and their effects on the pupil, the destabilization induced by darkness and the recourse … Continued