Light, sound, infrared heat and -- dinosaurs
Concordia's Faculty of Fine Arts Gallery will begin the new year with two immersive and thought-provoking exhibitions.
For Holocene, Jim Holyoak will generate a 10'9" tall, 115' long drawing installation inside the York Corridor vitrine of the Faculty of Fine Arts (FOFA) Gallery. Within this long, glass hallway, he will draw a geological timescape inhabited by endangered, extinct, and imaginary animals.
Thinking of himself as an amateur paleoecologist, and of the FOFA vitrine as a large terrarium, Holyoak will volunteer himself as a semi-captive specimen, and grow a paper forest.
This indoor forest will be not only a timescape, but also a mindscape -- a realm of fact and fantasy, inhabited by monsters and other animals, extinct and endangered, throughout the span of life on Earth.
Like a conscientious gardener, Holyoak will tend to the space every day, for one month.
Chris Salter's Atmosphere will bring together several sensorially-based, room-sized audio-visual-tactile installations.
Atmosphere is a total sensory environment combining coloured light, sound, infrared heat and haze. Over a 20-minute cycle, sudden bursts of light, sound and heat transform the main FOFA Gallery space into a synesthetic space fluctuating between dense overload and contemplative reflection.
Exploring what architecture critic Mark Wigley calls "an architecture of atmosphere," the exhibition will explore the sensuous climate of ephemeral, yet tangibly felt effects, enveloping visitors, and probing the ways in which the just-perceivable opens up our experience of noise and order, sense and sensation.
A Concordia Fine Arts artist, researcher and professor, Salter's large scale immersive environment Air XY, which he worked on in collaboration with designer Erik Adigard, was commissioned for the curated show in the 2008 Venice architecture Biennale.
Salter is interested in the ways in which new technologies amplify and transform the thresholds of human sensation and perception.
The exhibtions will take place from January 10 to February 11, 2011, and the vernissage will be on Thursday, January 13 from 5 to 7 p.m.
The FOFA Gallery is located in EV 1.715 of the Engineering, Computer Science and Visual Arts Integrated Complex (1515 Ste. Catherine Street W), and is open Monday to Friday from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m.
Related links:
• Concordia's Faculty of Fine Arts (FOFA) Gallery
• Faculty of Fine Arts