Category Archives: Installation

Public Art/Exhibition: Evan Lee: Fugazi, Teck Gallery, May 11, 2019 – Apr 26, 2020


Photo by Blaine Campbell
Evan Lee: Fugazi

Teck Gallery

May 11, 2019 - Apr 26, 2020
Evan Lee's image-based practice takes up interdisciplinary considerations of vision and
constructions of value through photography, painting and sculpture. In particular, Lees work
examines the aesthetic and social consequences that occur in the evolution of images and
imaging technology. His yearlong photo-based installation, Fugazi at the Teck Gallery,
considers methods of image capture as they effect ways of seeing and how value is socially
constructed.

Fugazi begins from photographic scans of cubic zirconia, a relatively inexpensive crystalline
form of synthesized material that often stands in for diamonds.[1] The images are captured
in detail and enlarged to a scale that transforms the gemstones internal appearance to one
that magnifies the distortion and fracture of light. Capturing is integral to photography and
Lees image capture opens up space for the questioning of optic purity, of the cubic zirconia
and of the image itself (as the act of enlargement results in a loss detail). The resulting
abstract patterns and refracted colours in Fugazi present a destabilizing kaleidoscopic
effect, similar to sunlit stained-glass windows.

Because of low cost, durability, purity, and visual likeness, cubic zirconia has been seen as a potential solution to the controversy surrounding the rarity and valuation of diamonds.
However, the diamond monopoly persists in perpetuating and fabricating worth through
other cultural measures. Fugazi is a fictionalized slang term for a counterfeit gemstone.[2]

The captures of the tiny gemstones are scaled up and bisected for the Teck Gallery to
fenestral proportions, and in their installation begin to share a language of architecture,
landscape and development. In dialogue with the Teck Gallerys view overlooking Burrard
Inlet and North Vancouvers coastal mountains, Fugazi is an intervention in the edifice,
mimicking and making strange aspects of building and its design, akin to a faceted window
illuminated from behind. Conjuring spaces of worship, the installation speaks to economies
of belief including religion, education and capitalism. Rising like mineral suns, Fugazi
positions the images along a horizon line that connects with our daily planetary rotations
while also drawing lines to the extraction industries and the appetite for development that
Vancouver is built on.[3]

Fugazi carries an open-ended resonance in relation to value and land. Extraction economies
are increasingly being challenged in this moment of late capitalism where climate change is
an oppressive force and a turn to renewal and alternate solutions are called for. Our relation
to land as a site of colonization is showing its irreversible damage to cultural and
environmental ecologies. In its consideration of the complexity of vision, Fugazi asks us to
unpack how we understand value in the image and its referents.

Lee is a Vancouver based artist whose work has been exhibited nationally and
internationally. He received his MFA from the University of British Columbia. Exhibitions
include Libby Leshgold Gallery; Winnipeg Art Gallery; Richmond Art Gallery; Kamloops Art
Gallery; Vancouver Art Gallery; Capture Festival; SFU Gallery; Contemporary Art Gallery;
Presentation House Gallery; Contact Photography Festival; Le Mois de la Photo Montreal;
Liu Hai Su Museum; and Confederation Centre. Lees work has been featured in Border
Crossings, Flash Art International, Lapiz International Art Magazine, Yishu Journal of
Contemporary Chinese Art, Canadian Art, and Art on Paper. He was shortlisted for the
Sobey Art Prize in 2014 and has undertaken public art commissions. His work is
represented by Monte Clark Gallery.
Curated by Melanie O'Brian

http://www.sfu.ca/galleries/teck-gallery/EvanLee-Fugazi.html.html

TECK GALLERY
SFU Harbour Centre, 515 West Hastings Street
Vancouver BC

Public Art/Exhibition: Double Meaningless, No.3 Road Art Columns, Richmond

The City of Richmond invited me to mentor emerging Richmond Artists Crystal Ho and Chad Wong to produce public artworks on the theme of Migration. I wanted to try something a little different and work with text and language. My project, Double Meaningless, 2018 is a response to the ongoing debate in Richmond over signage and English language requirements.

 

https://www.richmond.ca/culture/publicart/no3rdartcolumns.htm

 

Exhibition: The Pacific, Libby Leshgold Gallery

Exhibition curated by Cate Rimmer
Opening Reception: Friday October 20, 2017 at 7:00pm

The Pacific, the inaugural exhibition at the Libby Leshgold Gallery, brings together artists from countries in and around the Pacific Ocean.

The exhibition considers the Pacific Ocean as a shared and connected space. It explores the idea that although the Pacific is an immense body of water there is a strong sense that it is a space of connection between peoples that live beside or are surrounded by it — that it brings people together rather than separates them. In contrast, much of the narrative around the Atlantic Ocean has historically perceived it as a space of distancing and division.

In thinking about the Pacific Ocean as a shared space we can consider the histories and contemporary concerns as linked while also being specific to each place. The show will include works that address environmental issues such as rising sea levels, nuclear contamination, the impact of industry and the built environment on the ocean. It will also consider human migration and the experiences of migrants. Finally it will touch upon our deep personal and spiritual bonds to the waters of the Pacific.

Some of the work in the exhibition include excerpts from Charles Lim’s Sea State, which was shown at the 56th Venice Biennale at the Singapore Pavilion, Paula Schaafhausen’s Ebbing Tagaloa, an installation made of sand and coconut oil, and Khvay Samnang’s Air, a video made in the Fukushima Prefecture shortly after the nuclear disaster occurred. Isabel and Alfredo Aquilizan will be making a large site-specific installation in the gallery in the weeks leading up to the opening.

Curated by Cate Rimmer, The Pacific extends the research begun in the multi-part exhibition The Voyage, or Three Years at Sea. It will include the work of Isabel and Alfredo Aquilizan (Philippines), Taloi Havini (Papua New Guinea), Charles Lim (Singapore), Genevieve Robertson (Canada), Jane Chang Mi (Hawaii), Khvay Samnang (Cambodia), Simryn Gill (Malaysia/Australia), Michael Drebert (Canada), Paula Schaafhausen (Samoa), Kalisolaite ‘Uhila (Tonga/New Zealand), Evan Lee (Canada), Beau Dick (Canada). There will be a series of talks and events scheduled around the opening and during the run of the exhibition that will include artists, migrant communities, social historians and scientists.

http://libby.ecuad.ca/exhibitions/2017/the_pacific.html

 

Public Art: Three Ginseng Roots, 2016 – Public Art Installation, River Park Place

The photographic sculpture Three Ginseng Roots is a commissioned artwork for River Park Place in Richmond, BC. Balancing modern materials and processes with natural forms and colours, the three glass panels are installed within the water feature to give the sense that the roots are floating.

Ginseng is a medicinal plant used by many cultures and especially in traditional Chinese medicine. Rare and precious specimens that have been found in the wild can be seen on display at the many herbal stores in Richmond. Ginseng is also grown on farms throughout Canada, including on the Fraser River. The artwork promotes good health, well-being and connection with nature.

It is said that the dried roots resemble human figures. These roots have been enlarged to the size of a person to make them come to life and so that viewers will imagined their own characters and personalities for them them

Untitled Migrant Ship Re-creation Project, 2009 – present, in progress

Untitled Migrant Ship Re-creation Project, 2009 – present, (in progress)

Migrant Ship Re-Creation Project – Main Works Page

An ongoing archive of material generated from this in-progress project, including sketches, 3D renders, work documentation, installation views, research, and other related ephemera.

In 2009, the artist began a re-creation of a press image depicting the arrival of the Sri Lankan migrant ship, the MV Ocean Lady at the west coast of Canada. This work was realized in many different forms, but most notably as a 3D re-creation and 3D printed models. In addition to photographs, drawings, paintings and other works, there is a web archive of this project.

It is with this project that the artist began looking at how migration has been depicted in media and in history. This subject concerns the complexities and challenges of immigration and its history in Canada, some of which were experienced directly by the artist’s family and friends.

At the moment, numerous people from Africa and the Middle East are attempting to reach Europe by sea. Many Europeans view this as problematic, leading to a strong rise in nationalism and anti-immigration rhetoric and policy. These attitudes also exist closer to home: in 2009 and 2010, two ships arrived at the coast of BC carrying Tamil asylum-seekers from Sri Lanka. Canadian authorities seized these ships and detained their crew and passengers. There has been massive public debate and speculation over the legality of their refugee claims and the practice of human smuggling, and a climate of xenophobia has developed amidst accusations of immigration “queue-jumping” and fears of terrorism. This has been echoed many times in Canada’s history by the arrival of: Fujianese migrants in 1999, Jewish Europeans on the MS St. Louis in 1939 and Sikhs on the SS Komagata Maru in 1914. And it is difficult to separate this history from that of slavery and colonialization.

Nude and Draped Figure Studies by the artist and his father, c.1950/2008-09

Nude and Draped Figure Studies by the artist and his father, c.1950/2008-09

Another pseudo-collaboration between the artist and his father, where nude studies made by the artist’s father in the 1950s are the source material for a period re-creation. In the finished installation of this work, the images made by the artist in the present were displayed with ones made by his father in the past, as if made by the same person at the same time and place. The artist’s intention was to create an anachronism. This project is the second time that the artists has used his father’s amateur photography and consider both projects to be collaborations with his father despite the 50-60 years difference and his very limited involvement. These projects follow a lineage of conceptual themes considered by artists such as Marcel Duchamp, Sherrie Levine, and Richard Prince probing the idea of originality and authorship in the work of art, but pushes further to consider the uncertain and unexpected roles that certain and unavoidable relations, such as those of family, time and history, might play.

Manual Labour, 2006

Installation view, Manual Labour, Richmond Art Gallery

Manual Labour, 2006

Manual Labour is a video loop comprised of black and white still images depicting an elderly labourer at work and rest at a residential construction site in east Vancouver. The silent procession of images is interrupted briefly when the homeowners arrive for a site visit. The video loop has been exhibited as a projection, and installed in the window of a door to a gallery that remained closed for the duration of the exhibition.