Apr. 09, 2008 - Issue #651: Spring Style ‘08

Projections

Projections plays with light, layers and flickering meaning

‘There came a point when so many museums and galleries were showing projection-based works as a regular part of their programming, it reached a critical mass, requiring a history to look at where it started and why it was relevant,” explains Barbara Fischer. 
 

A glimmer of Projections had danced in the University of Toronto-based curator’s mind since the mid-1980s, when it became clear a survey of the medium was needed to examine how film, video and slide technologies were being incorporated into the practices of two generations of artists.
Fischer’s background was in installation, and she was intrigued by the possibilities projection offered that branch of art. While even the most challenging experimental film was still essentially a passive experience for the viewer, projection transformed installation into something fundamentally different, layering another reality overtop an immediate physical environment and creating a more immersive encounter. 
 

Berlin’s Hamburger Bahnhof Museum produced a sprawling international overview of projection-based works over the winter of 2006/07, and Fischer realized Projections shortly afterwards, mounting a multi-site exhibition in Toronto that concentrated on Canadian artists, tracing the lineage from the earliest pieces to the work of recent practitioners. 
 

The original version of Projections was more expansive than what’s possible in the AGA’s space. Fisher responded to the restrictions by favouring key historic pieces, several of which have never before been seen in the city, grouping them roughly chronologically and linking them thematically, providing a glimpse of the development of media as medium and material. 

 

Fischer takes us on a journey that begins with the manipulation of light, with the first tentative steps into the medium mimicking or distorting time and space. Sunlight rises and falls in both Ian Carr-Harris’ and Gar Smith’s pieces in patterns as cyclical as breathing; both are travelogues of light. Two works by Michael Snow show his puckish investigations of gaze and interpretation, bombardments of imagery or action that are almost psychoanalytic (bonus: full frontal Joyce Wieland and naturally bushy bush, from when women weren’t expected to be hairless like a schoolgirl). 
 

The projection becomes dioramic in Wyn Geleynse’s frantic gerbil-like metaphor for diminished masculinity, while his heir David Hoffas constructs another of his elaborate dramatic tableaus (both are showstoppers). Some works are less installation than artifact, like photos of Krzysztof Wodiczko’s architectural manipulations or a Rodney Graham film canister, but still add context to the show.
 

Projected images have a haunting poeticism to them, whether moving or still, abstract or representational, pocket-sized or massive, narrative or jumbled, colourful or in monochromatic shades—they’re like mirages, fantasies, dreams or hallucinations. They affect us viscerally because projection functions as a mirror of perception: we recognize them as kin to the broadcasts of our deepest selves, the movies of our minds as we navigate the world, internalizing and interpreting a malleable reality. The greatest thrill in Projections is to see the vernacular of consciousness manipulated to serve as a shared art experience. V


Until Sun, Jun 8

Projections

Curated by Barbara Fischer

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