Michael Snow @ The PowerPlant posted on December 10th, 2009
11 December, 2009 – 7 March, 2010
Opening Reception: Thursday, 10 December, 8-11 PM
Curated by Gregory Burke, Director of The Power Plant
Opening on the artist’s 81st birthday, ‘Recent Snow: Projected Works by Michael Snow’ surveys the legendary Canadian artist’s forays into video installation from the past nine years. With seven projection works on display – most never before seen in Toronto – the exhibition includes works such as That / Cela / Dat (2000) and SSHTOORRTY (2005) as well as the world premiere of two new pieces. A pioneer particularly in experimental film, Snow has broken ground in every medium imaginable, from photography to improvisational music. The exhibition attests to the ongoing relevance of Snow’s playful and experimental practice, and the influence it continues to exert on the international contemporary art world. It also marks Snow’s return to The Power Plant fifteen years after the ambition retrospective ‘The Michael Snow Project’ (1994) was co-organized by The Power Plant and the Art Gallery of Ontario.
The product of a restless intelligence and a sharp wit, Snow’s work deftly juggles and juxtaposes the sensorial and the cerebral. Snow’s video projections manipulate the space between the moments of recording and of reception, the surface of the world and the surface of the screen to stage the dynamic play between a video camera and material reality. Snow uses the camera as an instrument capable of shaping and altering what is pointed toward: in his hands, realism becomes far from realistic and the familiar takes us by surprise.
Condensation . A Cove Story (2008) – which “condenses” footage of weather systems through time-lapse – transforms the passing of time as it unfolds the Maritimes. Solar Breath (Northern Caryatids) (2002) also takes inspiration from this environment: its dance of sun, window, curtain, and wind becomes “a contemplative time-light-motion work of art…”
The Corner of Braque and Picasso Streets (2009) projects a live video feed of traffic on Queens Quay West onto a cubist relief composed of rectangular plinths on the gallery wall. The brand new, four-screen Piano Sculpture (2009) is a composition spanning a quartet of piano keyboards, evidencing the vitality of music – and that instrument in particular – to Snow’s aesthetic universe. Finally, Serve, Deserve (2009)– also premiering in this exhibition – projects a place setting onto a tabletop as dishes progressively fill up with food that seems to fall down the projector beam.
‘Recent Snow’ will be accompanied by screenings of some of Snow’s iconic experimental films, and by a feature article by Montreal-based art historian Martha Langford in the Winter 2009 issue of The Power Plant’s magazine SWITCH.
Michael Snow (born in Toronto, 1928) has exhibited internationally for over five decades. His films have been included in hundreds of film festivals and in retrospectives in Tokyo, Brussels and Geneva. Recent solo exhibitions have taken place at Àngels Barcelona (2009), BFI Southbank Gallery, London (2008), the Museum of Modern Art, New York (2005), and Kunst-Werke, Berlin (2002), and his work has been selected for recent biennials in Sydney (2008), São Paulo (2006) and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2006). As a musician, Snow has performed internationally and has released many recordings, most recently with Aki Onda and Alan Licht (Victo, 2008).
All text sourced from the Power Plan website : here.
Snow’s 1967 Wavelength.
