In his second solo exhibition at McBride Contemporain, Montr\u00e9al-based artist Matt Shane plunged viewers into a vivid and disquieting world of amphibians suspended in dense and luminous waters. Known for his collaborative mural work with Jim Holyoak, Shane has more recently turned to introspective oil painting. His new series, In Fitzca\u2019s Pond<\/em> (2024\u201325), features seven canvases that delve into the fragile ecologies of wetland environments. In these works, he reflects on spaces that are simultaneously vibrant, vital, and increasingly at risk.<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
The paintings caught the eye with their surreal, almost psychedelic palette. Frogs and forest vegetation are rendered in neon pinks, electric blues, and acid purples\u200a\u2014\u200acolours rarely found in nature. Shane juxtaposes these artificial hues with intricate, closely observed details, generating a subtle dissonance between realism and fantasy. The water, thick and glistening, often resembles oil slicks, its surface refracting light like gasoline. This visual effect becomes a metaphor for contamination, evoking the iridescent shimmer of pollution floating atop a pond. Rather than illustrating a particular environmental disaster, Shane\u2019s paintings suggest a world in which toxicity has been absorbed into the very fabric of the landscape. The art historian T. J. Demos describes such visual strategies as part of an \u201caesthetics of climate emergency,\u201d in which the aim is not to document catastrophe directly but to evoke its psychological and material presence in more layered, affective ways. He argues that the visual culture of environmental upheaval is inherently diverse and calls for methods that reach beyond institutional art, encompassing a wide range of creative practices.^{1<\/sup><\/a><\/span>} 1 <\/a> - T. J. Demos, \u201cThe Politics and Aesthetics of Climate Emergency,\u201d in Art and Knowledge after 1900: Interactions between Modern Art and Thought<\/em>, eds. James Fox and Vid Simoniti (Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 2023), 270.<\/span> In Fitzca\u2019s Pond<\/em> captivated with its luminous surfaces, yet beneath this deceptively bright exterior, a darker and more unsettling atmosphere gradually emerged. Echoing Demos\u2019s approach, Shane challenges dominant visual conventions and prompts us to reconsider our relationship with the world, ourselves, and the changing ecosystems around us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
$\"Matt$ Matt Shane<\/strong>
In Fitzca’s Pond<\/em>, exhibition view, McBride Contemporain, Montr\u00e9al, 2025.
Photo: Guy L’Heureux, courtesy of the artist & McBride Contemporain, Montr\u00e9al<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
At the centre of these scenes are frogs, presented not as scientific specimens but as sentient witnesses. Their stillness feels heavy with implication. We encountered them in a kind of t\u00eate-\u00e0-t\u00eate, their eyes meeting ours across the canvas. Are they spectators, victims, or quiet seers of what is to come? These creatures are exquisitely sensitive to environmental change, breathing through permeable skin that registers shifts in water quality and air. Their presence is quietly revelatory. As barometers of ecological fragility, they remind us that systems of life and decay are deeply entangled. The philosopher Donna Haraway uses the term \u201cresponse-ability\u201d to describe the ethical practice of staying with such trouble\u200a\u2014\u200aremaining open to the complexities of human and nonhuman interdependence. In Staying with the Trouble<\/em> (2016), she challenges readers to cultivate attentiveness rather than retreat into abstraction or despair.^{2<\/sup><\/a><\/span>} 2 <\/a> - Donna J. Haraway, Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene<\/em> (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2016), 56.<\/span> Shane\u2019s frogs embody this idea. They are not symbols of doom but figures of vulnerable endurance, interwoven with and responsive to their altered surroundings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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$\"Matt$
Matt Shane<\/strong>
A Thousand Tiny Bells<\/em>, 2025.
Photo: Guy L\u2019Heureux, courtesy of the artist & McBride Contemporain, Montr\u00e9al<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
Shane\u2019s compositions invite a slower, more careful mode of looking, as they emphasize relationships over isolated focal points and draw attention to the subtle edges where skin seems to blur into leaves and floating plants. The exhibition unfolded as an invitation to pause, linger, and perceive the barely visible transformations taking place. Within this heightened state of attentiveness, both painter and viewer engaged in what the anthropologist Anna Tsing terms the \u201carts of noticing,\u201d a concept she develops in The Mushroom at the End of the World<\/em> (2015). Tsing suggests that by attending to the marginal and precarious, we can begin to understand how life persists amid ecological ruination.^{3<\/sup><\/a><\/span>} 3 <\/a> - Anna Tsing, \u201cArts of Noticing,\u201d in The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins<\/em> (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2015), 11\u201326.<\/span> There is also a historical resonance in Shane\u2019s focus on undergrowth and decay. His imagery recalls the seventeenth-century sottobosco<\/em> tradition, in which artists such as Otto Marseus van Schrieck depicted forest floors teeming with fungi, reptiles, and detritus. These works celebrated nature\u2019s intricacies and acknowledged its cycles of death and regeneration. Shane builds on this lineage, but with a tone of quiet urgency. Where the sottobosco<\/em> painters catalogued and celebrated, Shane seems to mourn. His frogs are not simply part of a biodiverse ecosystem, but of a disappearing one as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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$\"Matt$
Matt Shane<\/strong>
Reed Weaver<\/em>, 2025.
Photo: Guy L\u2019Heureux, courtesy of the artist & McBride Contemporain, Montr\u00e9al<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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Though based on a specific site in the Laurentians, the setting of In Fitzca\u2019s Pond<\/em> feels archetypal. This could be any pond\u200a\u2014\u200arural or urban, remembered or dreamed. The ambiguity of place deepened the sense of instability running through the exhibition. Shane presented a vision of nature that is already altered, already haunted. His work responds to ecological crisis through imagery that is at once uncanny and speculative, inviting a more imaginative reckoning with environmental precarity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ultimately, In Fitzca\u2019s Pond<\/em> was a meditation on fragility, not just of ecosystems, but of perception itself. What do we fail to see when we assume we already know what a pond looks like? What might emerge if we allowed ourselves to look differently, more slowly, and with care? In Shane\u2019s hands, painting becomes a tool for ecological inquiry, attunement, and mourning. His exhibition is not a manifesto, but a call to notice what still flickers beneath the surface. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":270160,"template":"","categories":[888],"numeros":[7549],"disciplines":[],"statuts":[],"checklist":[],"auteurs":[7555],"artistes":[2658],"thematiques":[],"type_jeunes-critiques":[3128],"class_list":["post-269907","jeunes-critiques","type-jeunes-critiques","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-young-critic","numeros-115-decay","auteurs-anna-klein-en","artistes-matt-shane-en","type_jeunes-critiques-laureate"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/jeunes-critiques\/269907","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/jeunes-critiques"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/jeunes-critiques"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/270160"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=269907"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=269907"},{"taxonomy":"numeros","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/numeros?post=269907"},{"taxonomy":"disciplines","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/disciplines?post=269907"},{"taxonomy":"statuts","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/statuts?post=269907"},{"taxonomy":"checklist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/checklist?post=269907"},{"taxonomy":"auteurs","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/auteurs?post=269907"},{"taxonomy":"artistes","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artistes?post=269907"},{"taxonomy":"thematiques","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/thematiques?post=269907"},{"taxonomy":"type_jeunes-critiques","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/type_jeunes-critiques?post=269907"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}