Monumental Ego threatens each of us from without and within, and four years since his last solo show in Montreal, Isaac Cordal returns with a new solo show portraying the monster, now on view at Galerie C.O.A. Tackling economic, social and environmental issues, Ego Monuments is a new body of work that examines how our inability to be part of nature and our arrogance as a species inhibits our ability to integrate with nature.

Through his career, Cordal has been best known for small, site-specific interventions that comment over-consumption and under conservation, as he promotes a wider perspective of existential and social crisis in the world. Combining sculpture and photography, his modestly scaled sculptures placed carefully in urban surroundings, present visual poems current feelings about alienation, lethargy, guilt, melancholy.

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Ego Monuments successfully brings emotional and instructive public intervention into the gallery setting. From his biggest piece depicting grey-suited men seated as numb spectators of life to a series of sculptures portraying people in beach attire melting amid global warming, Cordal drives his point. In minimal style, he holds our lifestyle up to scrutiny. Blind to reality, almost all the characters have eyes closed, immersed in smartphones or hidden behind VR headsets, the masks of modern-day.

In addition to sculptural work, the exhibition includes a series of photographs, along with drawings, sketches, and reference/WIP photos that provide a behind-the-scenes view of Cordal's practice. Sasha Bogojev