When you start to look back: 18 older men sing Leonard Cohen's 'I'm Your Man'

You stand inside a Stonehenge-like array of body-sized screens suspended in darkness. On each, staring back at you, stands an older man. He shifts his weight, or leans on his cane, patiently awaiting his cue in a tan suit, or a tattered punk t-shirt and jeans, or a preppy sweater tied around his shoulders, or in drag. Together they make up an unlikely group, but they've shown up for this party, with you in the middle, and now they open their mouths and sing.

I'm Your Man (A Portrait of Leonard Cohen) is one of the most memorable experiences at the musée d'art contemporain de Montreal's Leonard Cohen-inspired exhibit A Crack In Everything. In building this touching and stark meditation on masculinity, fragility and communion, Berlin-based South-African artist Candice Breitz invited 18 Cohen fans — all older men — to a Montreal recording studio to perform his album I'm Your Man in its entirety.

"I was interested in this moment in life where one starts to look back and contemplate what kind of a life one has lived and what kind of a life one wishes to continue living," Breitz explains.

To complete the recording, she asked the Shaar Hashomoyim men's choir — who also provide the backdrop on Cohen's end-of-life anthem "You Want It Darker" — to come up with a haunting backing track.

And the song reaches new depths when performed by men at the end of their lives. Says Breitz: "Even when he was a young man, Cohen was already someone who wrote about and thought about mortality in very profound ways."

Catch the exhibit A Crack in Everything at the Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal until April 9, 2018.