The New Paradigm: Models, Diagrams, Proposals and Provisions for the Coming Age
Opening Celebration: March 3, 5-8pm
Dates: March 4-27, 2010
Hours: Thursdays, Fridays, Saturdays from 1-5pm
Location: The Pavilion (Langara College front lawn, 100 W 49th Ave)
The Langara College Centre for Art in Public Spaces invites you toThe New Paradigm: Models, Diagrams, Proposals and Provisions for the Coming Age.
Featuring new work by artists Geoffrey Farmer, Devon Knowles, T&T, Ron Tran and Elizabeth Zvonar, The New Paradigm utilizes the context of The Pavilion as an oracle to present artworks that function as generative, reflexive tools that orient us towards our collective future. The role of creative work, whether it be craft, assemblage, collage or collecting is presented as a crucial element of extropy - the prediction that human intelligence and technology will enable life to expand in an orderly way throughout the universe. The playful approach to this journey that these artists have taken indicates an auspicious outcome.
The Pavilion is a project by Artist-in-Residence Holly Ward. Symbolic of difference and utopian thinking, The Pavilion is a geodesic dome intended to serve as a catalyst for speculative thinking and artistic experimentation. The public is invited to attend the program of events taking place in The Pavilion from January through April 2010.
About the Artists
Geoffrey Farmer lives and works in Vancouver. His work is at once fragile and multiform, operating on the same level as everyday experience: simultaneously rational and chaotic, undeniably concrete, yet shaped by the imagination. In a voice that combines poetry and social commentary, his work conjures and reactivates a variety of narratives drawn from history, popular culture, and the social environment. It also reflects an interest in the exhibition per se – both its fictional power and its temporal component.
Past exhibitions include a survey exhibition at the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal (Montreal), a solo exhibition at the Witte de With (Rotterdam, Netherlands), and group exhibitions at the Tate Modern, the ICA Boston and Johnen Gallery in Berlin. Farmer has also participated in the Sydney and Brussels Biennale.
T&T (a.k.a. Tyler Brett and Tony Romano) have been working collaboratively for the past decade. During this time, T&T have “cobbled together their own vision of an ecologically sound and socially harmonious future landscape. Suspending us in the present between the past and the future, childhood and adulthood, reality and fiction, T&T locates a heterotopia sustained by imagination, innovation and play” (excerpt from Patrik Andersson, Onward Future, Exhibition Catalogue, Oakwood Gallery and Museum London, 2008)
Graduates of Emily Carr Instituteof Art + Design, Vancouver, they currently live and work in Bruno, Saskatchewan and Toronto, Ontario, respectively. They have exhibited their work internationally and are represented by Clint Roenisch Gallery (Toronto) and Trapp Editions (Vancouver).
Ron Tran is a Vancouver-based artist whose practice explores the ways that chance and coincidence influence daily life. Tran studied at Emily Carr Institute of Art + Design, and recently completed his two-month residency at Neon Gallery (Sweden).
In 2007, Tran was selected to be in the EAST International biennial exhibition (Norwich, England). He has participated in several group and solo exhibitions in Canada including Saidye Bronfman Centre, Helen Pitt Gallery, Artspeak Gallery, and Access Artist Run Centre. Tran has also exhibited in Liu-Haisu Museum (Shanghai, China).
Tran is in a forthcoming solo show at the Charles H. Scott Gallery in 2011.
Devon Knowles’ practice addresses current and historical models of production and optical phenomenon. Through negotiating modes of manufacturing, Knowles adopts the role of maker; one who both successfully and poorly executes the “skilled” crafts at hand. Simultaneously, both materials and colour are implicated into the same areas of taste and judgment.
Devon received her MFA from the University of Victoria in 2008 and holds a BA Honours from the University of Guelph. Her work has been shown throughout Canada and the United States.
Elizabeth Zvonar graduated from Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design, Vancouver in 2001. In 2009, Zvonar received the Mayor’s Award in the emerging visual arts category. In 2008, Zvonar was the inaugural artist at the Malaspina Print Research Residency and artist-in-residence at the Banff Centre for the Cosmic Ray Research thematic residency led by Janice Kerbel.
Zvonar has exhibited widely both nationally and internationally at venues including the Contemporary Art Gallery (Vancouver), Morris and Helen Belkin Gallery (Vancouver), Artspeak (Vancouver), Cohan and Leslie (New York), Sign Gaienmae Gallery (Tokyo) and at Museum van Hedendaagse Kunst Antwerpen (Mechelen, Belgium). Her most recent solo exhibitions include There Are No Rules at the Western Front and On Time at the Contemporary Art Gallery (Vancouver).
In 2010, Zvonar will be guest speaker for the CCA Glasgow symposium, How Do We Go On? with Faith Wilding and Kate Davis, commissioned by Glasgow International Festival for the Visual Arts. Zvonar lives and works in Vancouver, Canada.
To learn more, please click on the following:
The Pavilion project, by Artist-in-Residence Holly Ward
Langara College Centre for Art in Public Spaces