Échos narratifs feature recent works by James Lee Chiahan, Adad Hannah, and John Latour. Through a variety of media, the works in this exhibition explore the relationship between painted and photographic images, allowing a plurality of narratives and temporalities to emerge.
JAMES LEE CHIAHAN
This series is inspired by some of James Lee Chiahan's favourite moments in a selection of movies. It was featured in the exhibition Film School—A Painting Show at Giant Robot (2025, LA). These paintings are intended to be presented as diptychs.
Flower / Butt
“These are two scenes that made me laugh from the all-timer Stephen Chow joint, Kung Fu Hustle (2004)” -JLC
Father and son / Mother and daughter
“The pair here is from some really tender scenes in John Cassavetes’ film Love Streams (1984).” – JLC
Hunters in the snow (After Bruegel) / Packing (After Vuillard)
“Two images from a childhood classic, Home Alone (1990, Chris Columbus). This movie probably made a whole generation of us think about how to set up our own DIY home defense. I feel like a few of Kevin's contraptions would have been lethal damage.”- JLC
James Lee Chiahan (李佳翰, b.1990 Taiwan) works and lives in Montréal. He primarily works in oil painting and charcoal drawing and has also created several murals in both public and private settings. Recently, he has completed murals for BMO (2025, René-Lévesque/De Bullion, Montreal), Davies Ward Phillips & Vineberg LLP (2024,Montreal), and Montreal's Chinatown (2024 with Bryan Beyung). He is also widely recognized for his illustration work, which has earned him numerous awards from prestigious institutions,including American Illustration 43 (2024, 2025), the Canadian Magazine Awards (2024, Grand Prize for Cover Art), Jackson's Art Prize (2024, Shortlist), and The Society for News Design (2024), among others. His clients include The New Yorker, The Washington Post, The Walrus, The New York Times, and Apple. His work is held in private collections worldwide and has been exhibited in Canada and the United States. He is a finalist for the Kingston Prize 2025.
ADAD HANNAH
“For this new project, I turned my attention to Edgar Degas’ L’Absinthe, a painting that has long fascinated me for its quiet tension, psychological weight, and what I have always read as a nod toward what in 1875 would have been the emerging medium of photography. I reconstructed the scene in my studio, building a life-sized version of the original café setting and working with two life models to inhabit the roles of the painting’s figures. The result is a series of videos and photographs that chart a slow unravelling. In some images, we see an almost exact replica of the original -- down to the angle of the bodies and the shadows or reflections on the wall behind them. In others, the illusion begins to fray: the performers wear their own street clothes, the set begins to show its seams, and the boundaries between past and present, fiction and construction, become porous. As with much of my work, this project explores the tension between stillness and performance, surface and psychology. It’s about how we inhabit images, and how images inhabit us. In The Absinthe Drinker (after Degas), I’m not simply recreating a painting, I’m pulling it apart and sticking it back together, moment by moment. “ AH
Born in New York in 1971, Adad Hannah lives and works in Vancouver. He has exhibited, among others, at the BIAN International Digital Art Biennial (Montreal, 2024), Prague Biennial 5 (2011), the 5th International Video Art Biennial (Israel, 2011), the 4th Biennal de Montevideo (2019), the 4th Seoul International Media Art Biennale (2006), Casa Encendida (Madrid, 2006), Viper Basel (2004), as well as at numerous Canadian and international museums. He has received many awards, such as the Toronto Images Festival Installation/New Media Award (2004), the Bogdanka Poznanovic Award at Videomedeja International Festival (2004), and the Victor Martyn Lynch-Staunton Award (2009). His works have been produced at museums including the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, the National Gallery of Canada, the Vancouver Art Gallery, the Rodin Gallery (Seoul), the Remai Modern (Saskatoon), and the Prado Museum (Madrid). Hannah’s work can be found in numerous collections, including the National Gallery of Canada, Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, the Musée National des Beaux-Arts du Québec, the Musée Rodin (Paris), the Ke Center for Contemporary Art (Shanghai), the Zacheta National Gallery of Art (Warsaw), the Audain Art Museum (Whistler), and the Museo Tamayo (Mexico City).
JOHN LATOUR
John Latour’s text-based art, sculpture, and found photography highlight the ways in which we connect with the past, and how this uniquely human activity is mediated through words, objects, and images. In his photographic work, he uses found snapshots or portraits of individuals and small groups of people from the early twentieth century. By applying flecks of white paint to these anonymous figures, their features become blurred and highlighted – existing both in the past and the present, in a state of presence and absence. This process of erasure points to the inevitable fading of all subjects over time.
John Latour is a Montreal-based visual artist who works in a range of media including sculpture and installation, found photography, page art, and artists’ books. Latour holds a BFA in Studio Arts, a MLIS, and a MA in Art History. He is the recipient of grants from the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council, the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec – and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (as a member of the research group Elastic Spaces). Latour has had solo exhibitions in Quebec, Ontario, Alberta and London (UK) and he has participated in group exhibitions across Canada and abroad. His work is found in the Hallmark Fine Art Collection (Kansas City), the Fine Art Collection of the City of Ottawa, and the Tom Tomson Art Gallery (Owen Sound) in addition to numerous private collections. Recently, his photographic work was featured at the United Contemporary (Toronto) in a solo exhibition titled Thursday’s Child.
