artist lecture: Vid Ingelevics

Art and Art History Presents

Vid Ingelevics

Thursday 10 September 2009

12:30 – 1:30 p.m.

Sheridan B124

Vid Ingelevics on his work: My art practice has followed a number of formal threads over the past two decades – moving between and across the media of photography, video, sound and installation. The subject matter, also diverse, has included: a study of post-WWII displaced persons camps in Germany; an installation work at Toronto’s City Hall that examined the demise of the Metro Toronto’s city halls that existed prior to amalgamation; a contemplation of the complications of translating bird song into human language as found in birding guides; an impersonation of a museum staff photographer who made “documents” that should have, but never were, commissioned; a complete full-scale reconstruction of a forgotten exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art based only on its documentation; and, currently at Oakville Galleries, studies of deer hunting platforms and woodpiles under the title, hunter/gatherer. What underlies many of these disparate-seeming works is my concern with problems of representing the past – i.e., issues around documentation - and the inherent tensions between our desire to remember and our need to historicize.

Vid Ingelevics is a Toronto-based artist, independent curator and writer. He currently teaches graduate and undergraduate students at Ryerson University within the School of Image Arts. His artwork and curatorial projects have been exhibited across Canada, Europe and in the United States. His writing has appeared in publications such as Canadian Art, C, Blackflash and others internationally. Currently, he is at work on several projects – a study of the economy of family-run stores on a particular street in Toronto and, in collaboration with artist Blake Fitzpatrick, a North America-wide search for fragments of the Berlin Wall, one of the world’s largest mobile ruins. Excerpts from the latter work-in-progress will be exhibited this fall to coincide with the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall at the German consulate, Toronto and the Canadian Embassy, Berlin.

Image: Woodpile #7 (2006), C-print