Joshua Schwebel\u2019s exhibition The Tenant<\/em>, at Centre Clark, is both a testament to and an indictment of the economic, real estate, and social forces that have precipitated the transformation of Montr\u00e9al into a cannibalistic developer\u2019s market. Documenting the 2001 purchase of 5445\u200a-\u200a5455 de Gasp\u00e9 by Allied Properties Real Estate Investment Trust and the gradual pushing out of its tenants, the original pieces, ready-mades, and artful detritus on display tell a narrative of continued displacement. With the collaboration of artists and cultural workers, Schwebel\u2019s intentional uses and distortions of labour, storytelling, and the aesthetics of millennial creative capital are intellectually stimulating and alluringly beautiful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Upon entering the gallery, the exterior sound of de Gasp\u00e9\u2019s productive worker bees gives way to the humming warehouse noise of an industrial sewing machine. Illuminated by a shop table lamp on a custom-fit wooden table with cast iron legs, the machine comes from the Chabanel studios, the new area to which many artists relocated following the Allied takeover of the de Gasp\u00e9 building. Days before The Tenant<\/em> opened, a motley crew of contemporary local artists participated in a procession from their new studios to Clark. They carried leftovers from garment shops that have now closed or moved away from Chabanel\u200a\u2014\u200acardboard boxes full of zippers, advertisements for custom alterations, a canvas basket truck, and a for sale sign\u200a\u2014\u200athat gestured to the gentrification that haunts these communities. These found objects, carefully assembled in the gallery, acknowledge how the cultural sector is itself a cog in a system of dislodgement. Facilitating the transition from culturally diverse, immigrant-rich, and affordable neighbourhoods to postmodern hubs of bland, white innovation, Schwebel\u2019s installation is a reminder of the arts sector\u2019s implication in this cycle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Tenant<\/em> outlines the deals and dealings that led to Allied\u2019s purchase of the area and its simultaneous branding of itself as a \u201cfriend of the arts.\u201d Detailed descriptive texts of Schwebel\u2019s process in researching, conceiving of, and installing the project are displayed on seven blue aluminum engraved plaques. These pieces mimic the corporate ones found throughout the lobby of the building. Expensive-looking knockoffs, Schwebel\u2019s labels move between fact and anecdote, hijacking the hip design used to sell the Allied vision. We learn of an Allied branded Monopoly game; the creation of Block Magazine<\/em>, which preyed on artists; and Schwebel\u2019s theft of a dustjacket from a book by Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities<\/em>, while visiting the Allied head offices in Toronto. The items themselves are displayed in the space on sewing tables, weaving into the exhibition the mainstream visual vocabulary of industrial design with its uncomfortable subtexts of labour, exploitation, real estate speculation, and rampant capitalism. Cutting through the smoke and mirrors with incisiveness, Schwebel\u2019s exhibition screams, here we are, agents and pawns in the deaths and lives of our own great cities.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/esse.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/03\/104_CR_MORELLI_SCHWEBEL_RGB_02.jpg\")
The Tenant<\/em>, exhibition view, 2021.
Photo : Paul Litherland<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n