The Gazette from Montreal, Quebec, Canada • 94

Art I' Success earns Xavler Nuez'f Buddha With a Little Help From Her Friends. art Photos celebrate club's flamboyant atmosphere DAVIO LISS SPECIAL TO THE GAZETTE a new mme Squeeze Night at Club Metropolis has become notorious for the flamboyant antics of eccentric gcndcr-bcndcrs, go-go dancers and fetishists, and for the flaunting of up-front sexuality and serious fashion crimes. In fact, only a small number of the club's thousand or so patrons indulge in such goings-on, but those who do provide visually rich material for any sociological or artistic study in human behavior. As a frequent visitor to the Saturday night ritual. I was expecting Xavier Nuez's Mondo Squeeze exhibition of photographs to be a wild and wacky document of this Fellini-csque cabaret.

While the 1 7 color photographs on display in the club's VIP lounge are technically competent and com-positionally sound, they are remarkably tame given 1 vr 4 i -4 1 ftf y-' V9F n- -a 1 1 Cent Jours begins ninth season with five shows the subject matter. I was expecting a more provocative exploration of the outrageous outfits and dynamic personalities that populate the sexually charged atmosphere. Instead. Nuez was focused on a handful of Squeeze-Night celebrities, and his approach essentially falls into two stylistic categories: portraiture and party snapshots. Not surprisingly, Nuez's strength lies in the more staged photographs.

A dazzling picture of a club habitue framed by the neon Metropolis sign offers an irresistible invitation to a decadent event. Another photograph, titled Buddha With a Little Help From Her Friends, is very slick and professional-looking, approaching the quality of Annie Leibovitz's work. As with Leibovitz, however, Nuez's photographs draw their strength from the personalities portrayed rather than from any innovation on the part nly a decade ago. Claude Gosselin and his fledgling Centre International d'Art Contemporain de Montreal organized the film, video and visual arts component of the splashy celebrations in Quebec City to mark the 450th anniversary of the arrival in North America of Jacques Cartier. From there, Gosselin, a former museum curator, and CI AC in 1985 went on to stage the first Cent Jours d'Art Contemporain.

a kind of festival celebrating the richness and inventiveness of progressive art. The event unique in Canada has always taken a decidedly international approach, with Les Cent Jours combining the best and the brightest of what's happening in Canadian contemporary art CIAC of the photographer. Taken as a whole, it's obvious from these photos that there are some unique personalities at Squeeze Night. A work titled Etienne and Plastik Patrick succeeds in conveying an attitude of light-hearted and genuine fun that has made Squeeze Night such a success since it began early last winter. Another prominent Squeeze Night celeb is Cindy.

Shehe is a tall, striking-looking creature who prances and dances around the club virtually every Saturday night. Cindy is usually clad in dangerously skimpy lingerie, poured on to a slim and sexy body that con with top-calibre work from abroad. The results, while uneven at times, have been controversial, provocative and deeply stimulating in a wav that manv mu- William S. Burroughs as seen through the lens pf Gottfried Helnweln (above). Cent Jours: organizer Claude GossBlIn at his new Sherbrooke St.

gallery with more -Helnweln portraits (left). One of Wanda Koop's Paintings for Dimly Rooms appears beldw. C-Jt IT! 1 seum exhibitions if 1 nftn fail tn hp AnH Gosselin and CIAC ANN DUNCAN ART ble all this together through generous corporate donations, the solid backing of Quebec's contemporary fuses and boggles the mind. Hisher huge smile and animated face reflect an effervescent and uninhibited personality. Yet, somehow, Nuez's photograph of Cindy falls completely flat in an attempt to portray a subject that should have been impossible to render so blandly.

To be fair, Nuez is a young photographer in the formative stages of his career. So despite the rampant cliches, these are fun pix that manage to convey the lively spirit of this weekly event and provide a colorful, decorative touch to the trash-chic design theme in the lounge. David Liss is a Montreal-based artist and art writer. BlW I lllfl 1MB ll IM li IMilBlM MHHIIMlMilltl llMMIIIIB I MlltflWlfflillirn lUf liflirflfWir InMtl Will Mondo Squeeze continues in the VIP lounge of the Club Metropolis, 59 Ste. Catherine St.

until Oct. 8. Squeeze Night takes place on Saturdays, 10 p.m.S a.m. artists and the creative use of government job-training grants. But this week, as a sure sign of CIAC's coming of age, Gosselin inaugurated a wondrous new exhibition space at 314 Sherbrooke St.

showed off CIAC's new and now permanent -headquarters above the exhibition hall and unveiled five separate exhibitions that are part of the ninth and latest Cent Jours. As part of this package, Gosselin also announced that CIAC planned to operate year-round, with exhibitions being held more or less on a continual basis. In the past, CIAC has held shows only sporadically outside of the Cent Jours festival each fall. "Finally," Gosselin said in an interview in the new hall's seven-metre-high space, "CIAC is becoming a true centre." But true to form, Gosselin and his non-profit, usually money-losing group have yet to work out the finances for the new space, which during the 1910s and '20s housed one of Montreal's first automobile showrooms. "This week I open a space and the financing isn't there, while other people do feasibility studies of feasibility studies," Gosselin said.

"But in the past, we have proved that if we want to do something we can And that is quite a feat, seeing as the National Gallery of Canada tried to put together a series of Canadian biennials and couldn't, and we're back year after year." So what exactly will Gosselin and CIAC be showing in its new space? Gosselin wouldn't say exactly, but he said the thrust of the exhibitions will deal with special projects or art from the past five years by senior and mid-career artists from both at home and abroad. He hopes to fill a niche he sees between the role of the museums, which have the resources to put on major retrospectives, and the more community-centred function played by the city-run Maisons de la Culture, the artist-run cooperative galleries, the university galleries and the like. "There is really nothing now for an artist of about 50 who wants to show in a professional atmosphere with professional curators and in a professional way," he said. To inaugurate the new exhibition space, which has to be one of the most dramatic in the city, Gosselin chose a powerful show of black-and-white photos by the Viennese-born German artist Gottfried Helnwein. Helnwein's work is everything that Annie Leibovitz's, shown last spring at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, is not.

While both shoot celebrities Helnwein's subjects include Keith Richards, Michael Jackson, Mick Jagger, William S. Burroughs and an extremely wasted Andy Warhol Helnwein's work is concentrated on the psychological rather than on the gimmicky and the theatrical. Helnwein shoots his subjects closely cropped and head on; there is usually nothing besides the subject's highly detailed face and Helnwein's stark, hard-edged, high-contrast and almost retro lighting. Leibovitz, on the other hand, relies on showmanship and manipulating her famous subjects into bizarre and even ridiculous poses. ti 4 (f Blane, a Metropolis denizen.

Ciac. wiiliam eakin PLEASE SEE CENT JOURS PAGE H7.