The Biennale de Montréal (BNL MTL)

October 19, 2016 – January 15, 2017.

http://www.bnlmtl.org/en/

The mission of La Biennale de Montréal is to foster, support, interpret and disseminate the most current visual arts practices by producing the biennial event BNLMTL. In this way, La Biennale de Montréal offers a wide audience a privileged opportunity to grasp the aesthetic and social issues addressed by today’s art. La Biennale de Montréal also provides an international platform for Québec and Canadian artists, curators, theoreticians, art critics and researchers working in various fields to meet, encounter and discuss cutting-edge practices, and contribute to different international networks.

All of the initiatives of La Biennale de Montréal are premised on risk and experimentation. Its goal is to support the most daring, thought-provoking art practices and curatorial projects while offering the public a diversity of experiences.

La Biennale de Montréal is pleased to announce the appointment of Philippe Pirotte, Director of the Staatliche Hochschule für Bildende Künste Städelschule and of Portikusin Frankfurt am Main, as Curator of its 2016 edition.

Following a rigorous international search, Mr. Pirotte has been selected to develop a distinctive programme of exhibitions, publications and events across multiple venues for BNLMTL 2016, the 2016 edition of La Biennale de Montréal, which will take place from October 19, 2016 through January 15, 2017. BNLMTL 2016 is presented by La Biennale de Montréal and co-produced with the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal (MAC).

“The entire Biennale team and our colleagues at the MAC and at our other partner institutions are energized by the appointment of Philippe Pirotte,” notes Sylvie Fortin, Executive and Artistic Director of La Biennale de Montréal. “His sustained presence in Montréal and his research across Canada will impact many communities. In addition, his selection will certainly introduce many international artists to the Biennale’s growing public. Mr. Pirotte is an uncompromising curator, a superb exhibition maker and a gifted writer who has already produced a number of memorable projects. We are pleased to provide him with this challenge and with a significant platform for experimentation.”

“I’m thrilled with the opportunity to develop an ambitious international project that engages with Montréal’s complexity,” states Philippe Pirotte. “At the moment, I am imagining the exhibition as a space that informs us about ourselves—uninvited. Simultaneously playful and fatalistic, it is a space where things can go awry. In that sense, the exhibition does not provide relief because its objects do not necessarily reveal themselves as truths.”

The theme or approach for BNLMTL 2016 will be announced later this year, as well as the team of advisors selected by Pirotte to support the development of the project. The list of participating artists and information about key projects will be released in May 2016.