Twenty-two colour photographs reveal Ernest Cormier’s central pavilion of the Université de Montréal as an integral part of the Montréal urban landscape and as a complex, varied spatial experience.

The exhibition originated in a commission to Gabor Szilasi by the CCA when research into the Fonds Cormier revealed a major gap in the photographic documentation of the Université de Montréal. Although there was extensive documentation of the construction of the university and views of it upon its immediate completion, there was no cohesive group of photographs that distilled not only particular aspects of the building—such as its monumental character, its rich development of internal spaces, and the subtleties of the lighting and materials—but provided a sense of how these were related to a whole. Gabor Szilasi, who has photographed aspects of Montréal extensively over the past twenty years, was asked to interpret the building in a way that would both complement the existing photographic documentation, and provide a new, coherent image of it.

Curated by David Harris, CCA.