Patrick Bernatchez: Les Temps inachevés

The Musée is delighted to present Patrick Bernatchez: Les Temps inachevés. This exhibition brings together, for the first time, major works from two cycles that represent a decade of conceptualization, creation, production and presentation: Chrysalides (2006–13) and Lost in Time (2009–15).

Mutation of forms, themes and meanings is omnipresent in Bernatchez's art. The exhibition title refers to the evolving nature of his practice, in which a work is never totally finished and each show is only a temporary stop along the way. The multiform works in the Chrysalides cycle revolve around questions of life and death, light and darkness, decomposition and rebirth. Begun in 2006 with a series of graphite and ink drawings, the cycle includes the sound installation Fashion Plaza Nights and a trilogy of films—I Feel Cold Today, Chrysalide and 13—which illustrate an industrial building's inner workings, architecture and inhabitants.

Time in all its dimensions is the overriding leitmotif of Lost in Time, which mixes past, present and future, through lived, cosmic and performative time. The cycle comprises over 20 works, including films and videos, audio recordings, sound-based installations, photographic and etched-mirror pieces, and sculptural objects, including BW, a watch that measures millennia. In Lost in Time, a feature-length film completed for the exhibition, the story of a helmet-clad horse and rider adrift in a landscape of ice and snow is intertwined with a strange scientific experiment.

Patrick Bernatchez: Les Temps inachevés is a co-production of the Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal and Casino Luxembourg – Forum d'art contemporain, in partnership with Argos – Centre for Art and Media, Brussels, and The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery, Toronto.