Nan Goldin: Museum of Contemporary Art. (Montreal).

Treating Goldin's landmark Ballad of Sexual Dependency, 1981-86, as a distant memory, this small-scale retrospective (the artist's first solo in Canada) concentrates primarily on her photographs from the '90s. That decade happens to mark a transition in Goldin's life from club-hopping, taboo-breaking, sexual-experimenting hyperactivity to a more mature and reflective adulthood (she turned forty in 1993), and a shift in her pictures from incident and angst to an almost formal sensitivity to color and composition. The result is a show of pictures of unmistakable--dare one say it?--beauty. Also on view are two post-Ballad slide/sound pieces: All By Myself--Beautiful at 40, completed in 1995 and itself a Goldin retrospective of self-portraits, plus the more recent Heartbeat, 2000-2001, with a mere 228 slides. May 21-Sept. 7.