City Odyssey (2009)

City Odyssey draws upon both the tradition of landscape and the contemporary postcard. While using these languages, the active gesture of writing upon Toronto's skyline and most recognizable landmark, rather than fixing the understanding, describes the ways in which the city and population adapt and change over time. 

Havana

Havana, Cuba

Although this is really a tourist shot, I enjoy it and decided to post it. I took it with a Vivitar plastic wind-up camera two years ago but it was developed only a few days ago.

Untitled 01 and 02 (This is the life!)

The Good Life series

Two “typical” photographs of Barbados scenery seen through a window covered with frost bring together two geographies and cultures.

Depending on the viewer’s perspective, it may portray the Northern phenomena of traveling south in the winter to get away from the “grind”. Although the exoticization may be innocent on the part of individuals, this longing and idealization of warmer climates is often done with no concrete understanding of the reality of daily life for the people there. The beauty of the frost becomes an allegory for the privilege and opportunity that is possible in developed countries.

From the Caribbean perspective, or in fact from the perspective of any country of the global south, the insidious nature of frost suggests the Westernization that is occurring in many countries. The frost permeating across the surface points to the increasing quantity of foreign-owned property and business in underdeveloped countries, which drives up the cost of living and real estate for locals further increasing the economic gap between rich and poor. With this gap comes a counter-idealization and necessity, which has can be seen in the history of emigration bringing with it the trauma of displacement through the generations.

Environmental Hazards

Within/out

This piece was selected for the AGYU 2009 emerging artist video screening curated by Heather Phillips.

Open to Interpretation

This work can be seen as part of Birdsong V.7 curated by P.Elaine Sharpe

Paul Petro Special Projects Space
May 16-30, 2009
980 Queen St. West, Toronto

The Full Moon Series

The Full Moon series is a fitting title for Renee Lear’s on-going Lighthouse work. All viewers can relate to Lear’s professed love of the “magical moment ”: when something - a sound, a ray of light, a smell - stops us physically and temporally and we feel our hearts squeeze at the exquisite moment. 

The cool temperatures make it difficult to see the three hours of live video-mixing from 8 to 11 pm on November 13, 2008 but passersby and friends stick it out for the time they can. The work does not contain a narrative therefore staying for the whole projection is not really necessary. Its ephemeral quality allows the pedestrian to catch a glimpse and carry away a feeling of wonder in all senses of the word.

With a contemporary twist of live video mixing projected onto a screen in a first-floor window, Lear takes back up the on-going issue of abstraction versus representation. The shifting layered images constantly disrupt the viewer’s sense of perspective. The projection shifts repeatedly from an image on a flat surface to one with perspective with a fore-, mid- and background then changes again to what appears to be only a silhouette of what is happening within the apartment, that is to say, the screen appears to revert back to a window to look through to see the art behind.

The piece is structured into segments that could be viewed individually or as a whole. In one segment, the image of the artist’s ghost-like hands can be seen shifting, fixing, and placing small glass squares. In another section, the image of a man can be glimpsed sporadically in a shifting field of light and shapes. In all the segments, the hint of representation tugs at our human desire to recognize and understand. Lear never fully allows us this. She teases us with flashes of recognizable shapes within abstract images and leaves us wanting for answers.

Whether this unfulfilled desire to understand is considered successful or not is subjective. I would argue it positively as she forces us to abandon for a moment our desire to understand, classifying and thereby control in a world too full of classification and control. My question would be, “do we always need to understand in order to judge?” A Kensington market pedestrian may have thought so when he asked, “What is it? Oh well, tell me if you have figured it out when I pass back.”

Obviously aware of this conflict, Lear deliberately incorporates the street into her performance. Two whistling friends sit on the step below the projection to catch the attention of those who move quickly through the world. The viewer’s response is as much part of the artwork as the video itself. Sitting on a pile of cardboard on the curb for recycling, I find watching pedestrians’ responses as fascinating as the video itself.

Life Drawing Class

Learn to learn

Hardwired, the axons are set
Armed with experience
My weapon weighs me down

I embark into new frontiers
Html css tags elements styles
The directions are confusing

Like a language, I am told
I refresh ma substance grise
And ftp my neurons to new synapses

Dreams

Untitled (Presence)