Out of Space : La photographie et l'imaginaire sculptural

John Duncan, Nestor Kruger, Erwin Wurm, Daniel von Sturmer, Amon Yariv

Opening on Thursday January 11 at 5pm.
The exhibition runs from January 11 to February 24, 2007
The gallery is open Tuesday through Saturday from noon to 5pm

Visual essay entitled Out of Space: La photographie et l’imaginaire sculptural and text by Susan Edelstein will be appearing as a special project in the next issue of PREFIX PHOTO.

Project organised by Jennifer Campbell  and France Choinière

Out of Space: La photographie et l’imaginaire sculptural is concerned with image practices which appropriate the parameters, both formal and conceptual, traditionally associated with sculpture or architecture in order to subvert the primary experience of the visible realm. Subjected, in this way, to demands other than those inherent to the image, the works in this exhibition have in common this subversion of an unmediatized reality, shifting it to a fictional, imaginary or artificial elsewhere whose form and meaning can only take shape through mediatization. Somewhere between the ordinary and the sublime, the referent and fiction, reality and illusion, Out of Space reveals approaches which, within a two-dimensional visual system which concerns itself with the three-dimensional depiction of the world, both validate and subvert the intrinsic qualities of the image.

Erwin Wurm, in his playful one-minute performances/sculptures, creates images using the classical paradigms of sculpture, such as gravity, weight, stability and materiality. Defying our perception of the human figure through colour, material and scale, and by means of diverse contortions, Wurm offers us human sculptures whose interest essentially resides in their captured representation. In the same vein, Daniel von Sturmer leads our gaze into an improbable environment composed of a single shot taken from an angle and in which everyday objects — rubber bands, scotch tape — self-propel and bounce about in defiance of all spatial logic. Amon Yariv’s objects, organized according to a precise configuration and a carefully calculated scale and perspective, break loose from their primary meaning and usual function to create new phantasmagorical forms. The structures photographed by John Duncan in Northern Ireland, despite their unusual nature, are for their part quite real: these gigantic mounds made out of a variety of urban debris bearing numerous effigies become social and political manifestos, popular monuments which resemble, in turn, bonfires, barricades or urban forts or shelter. Nestor Krüger’s work, in a different relation to architecture, offers us the troubling experience of an illogical and endless labyrinth which is nevertheless the product of an accurate virtual recreation of the interior of the German philosopher Wittgenstein’s home. With the highly appropriate title Analog, Krüger’s piece brings us face to face with the concept of authenticity but also with the incongruous relation that any two-dimensional image has with three dimensionality.

John Duncan, born in 1968, lives in Belfast, Ireland. He has studied photography at Newport (1989) and at the Glasgow School of Art (1992). His work has been shown at Belfast Exposed (Ireland), Gallery of Photography Dublin (Ireland), The Photographers’ Gallery (England), Gimpel Fils (England), Neue Gesellschaft fur bildende Kunst (Germany) and his work was selected for East 2006 (England).

Nestor Krüger, born in 1965, lives in Toronto where he completed a bachelor’s degree from the Ontario College of Art in 1989. As an interdisciplinary artist, he is known for his installations, drawing, paintings and for his participation in the artists’ collective Painting Disorders. His work has been presented both across Canada at the Contemporary Art Gallery (Vancouver), Mercer Union (Toronto), Art Gallery of Ontario (Toronto), Optica (Montreal), Eye Level Gallery (Halifax) as well as internationally at the Seoul Museum of Art (South Korea), Sharjah Biennal (United Arab Emirates), The Locker Plant (Texas), Southern Exposure (San Francisco). He is represented by goodwater in Toronto.

Daniel von Sturmer was born in 1972. He is originally from New Zealand and now lives in Australia. He completed both a bachelor and master’s degree at RMIT University in Melbourne, and continued his studies at Sandberg Institute in Amsterdam (Netherlands). Von Sturmer has shown his work at the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (Melbourne), Anna Swartz Gallery (Melbourne and Sydney), Dunedin Public Art Gallery (New Zealand), Adelaide Biennale of Australian Art (Adelaide) and the Art Gallery of New South Wales (Sydney). He has recently been chosen to represent Australia at the Venice Biennale in 2007.

Erwin Wurm, born in 1954, lives in Vienna, where he has been teaching at the University of Applied Arts since 2002. Wurm, one of Austria’s most renown contemporary artists, has presented solo exhibitions at the Museo d’Arte Contemporanea Roma (Italy), Contemporary Art Center in Cincinnati (USA), Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (San Francisco), CAPC Musée d’art contemporain (France), Palais de Tokyo (Paris), Musée d’Art Moderne et Contemporain (Geneva), Drawing Center of New York, Museum of Contemporary Art (Sydney), and Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien (Vienna). He is represented, amongst others, by Galerie Krinzinger.

Amon Yariv, born in 1975, resides in Tel Aviv, Israel. He completed a bachelor of Fine Arts at the Belzael Academy of Art and Design in 2002. His work has been exhibited in Israel at the Rubin Museum (Tel Aviv), Tel Aviv Museum, Israel Museum (Jerusalem), Ashdod Art Museum Monart Center (Ashdod), and has also shown in New York at Vivian Horan Fine Art. Yariv has received the Rafael Engel Award from the Haifa Museum and The Gerard Levy Prize from the Israel Museum recognizing his work as an outstanding emerging photographer. He is also the curator of the Gordon Gallery in Tel Aviv. Amon Yariv is represented by the Rosenfeld Gallery.

Dazibao thanks the artists for their generous collaboration and its members for their support. Dazibao receives financial support from the Canada Council for the Arts, the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec, and the Conseil des arts de Montréal. Dazibao is a member of the Regroupement des centres d’artistes autogérés du Québec.