Antimatter 2011

Media Installations

October 15 to 22, 2011

in the main Deluge gallery

Dawn & Dusk

Erwin Olaf | 2009

Dusk: A mother mourns the death of her husband while her son questions his existence. Dawn: A mother mourns the death of her child, while her husband tries to deal with the death and the misshapen newborn.

Working out of Amsterdam, Erwin Olaf explores issues of gender, sensuality, humour, despair and grace in his photo-based and video works to wide acclaim. Recently Olaf has created autonomous video works like Separation, Rain and Grief, starring models who also appear in the accompanying photo series. In the films they play a different character, as though his moving images provide a parallel history to his colour photographs. These short films have been selected for film festivals all over the world. Over the years many of Olaf’s works—from his unabashed nude portraiture and intense symbolism to the unflinching gaze in his blood-drenched images of staged violence—have provoked controversy. Not surprisingly, this ability to attract attention has seen his work embraced by the advertising world. In 2006 he was awarded Photographer of the Year in the International Color Awards. In 2007 Kunstbeeld magazine chose him Artist of the Year. On October 31, 2011, Olaf will be awarded the Johannes Vermeer Award, the Netherlands’ state prize for the arts.

also at Deluge

Wrestling with my Father

Charles Fairbanks | 2010

The exhibition is composed of two videos, Wrestling with my Father and The Men, which explore the power of mute gesture, POV and ideas of connectivity in the implication of narrative. In Wrestling with my Father, Fairbanks, a second generation wrestler, has documented, from a ringside vantage point, his father’s unconscious, kinetic reactions to his son’s performance: an interactive choreography of expectation, shared experience and DNA. In The Men, Fairbanks films a grappling exchange from his embedded mask camera: the result a barrage of alluring truncated images imbued with the possibility of menace.

“Within this extraordinarily simple set up are whole worlds of humour, pathos and intrigue. Fairbanks enlists the fighter’s perspective to create an immersive and engaging experience of intimacy and violence and their relationship to each other.” – Montreal Mirror

Charles Fairbanks, a native of Nebraska, attended Stanford on a wrestling scholarship where he studied Art and the History of Science. Upon completion of his graduate studies at the University of Michigan, Fairbanks travelled to Mexico where he fought professionally as the luchador “One-eyed Cat” (a reference to the camera built into his mask, which he has used to film much of his current oeuvre) and where he was visiting professor at UNCACH in Tuxtla Gutiérrez, Chiapas. In 2010 Fairbanks was chosen by Werner Herzog as a participant in the inaugural edition of his Rogue Film School. Fairbanks’ work has been screened and exhibited at Tepoztlán Institute for Transnational History of the Americas, Slamdance, Detroit’s Edwin Gallery, el Festival Internacional de Cine de Morelia, Black Maria, CPH:DOX, Images, IndieLisboa and in a cockfighting stadium in Chiapas.

at Studio 16½

Circles of Confusion

Kyle Whitehead | 2011

Circles of Confusion is a generative image and sound based installation composed of dual Super 8 film-loop projections integrated with dual optically-sensitive sine-wave oscillators. Similar to a Theremin, these scratch built oscillator circuits are controlled by light dependent sensors that modulate audible pitch and volume. Integrated into the projection system, the function of these Opto-Theremins is the real-time synthesis of discrete but complimentary dyadic sine-waveforms that are directly proportional to the intensity of the projected light—hand processed film images that are inverse matched but not mirrored pairs. Entropic by nature and not readily reproducible, this Super 8 film material exists in a state of continuous variability. The generative and reactionary conditions of Circles of Confusion create a hyper-awareness of the boundaries that exist between two distinct processes of sensory perception and blur the conventional divisions between them by suggesting that they are at once complementary and transmutable.

Kyle Whitehead is a media artist working with small-format film, alternative photographic processes and lo-fi electronics. He prefers a careful and considered approach to image making; which should not be confused with best practices, as his work is about embracing the potential of an indeterminate process. What he wants is the definitive by chance—leveraging lo-fi or DIY technologies often with unusual or startling effect. He is a graduate of Alberta College of Art and Design and currently resides in Calgary where he spends most of his time in the dark.

at Ministry of Casual Living

Wander

Jacynthe Carrier | 2010

In an abandoned space, a tableau vivant takes place and proposes a portrait from a nomadic inspiration: how the body becomes conveyor, but at the same time habitat. This short film is a wander within a suspended picture, a route within an imaginary community settled into the time of an image.

A native of Quebec City, Jacynthe Carrier works mainly in photography and in video. Holder of a Baccalauréat de l’Université du Québec à Montreal, she is now completing an MFA at Concordia University. Her artistic approach questions our way of occupying and of altering the contemporary territory. Her work has been presented at the Art Biennial of Quebec city (2008), the Photography Centre VU (2009), Centre Caravanserail in Rimouski (2009) and Galerie de l’UQAM (2010). In 2009, she received Le Prix Videre Relève underlining the recent production of an emerging artist in the region of Quebec.