You are here

Oliver Husain: French Exit

Country:

City:

Categories:

Date: 
Thursday, 10 May 2018 to Saturday, 16 June 2018
Opening: 
Thursday, 10 May 2018 - 6:00pm to 8:00pm

Close your eyes and visualize an obstacle, a barrier of some kind. Does it have a soft or a hard opening? Is it flexible like a fleshy membrane or stiff like glass? Could it be an invisible energy field or a subtle cultural border?  
 
Imagine your body weaving through this massive volume: pressing/dipping/stretching/shifting/curving. Round and around, you begin to move, to dance. The obstruction meets your force, face-to-face, body-to-body. When you push you are pulled; when you turn you are turned. Spinning and slipping, reflecting and deflecting, you lose track of outside with inside. Your subjectivity catches against objective reality. A blurred version of yourself—doubled, tripled, quadrupled—you have eight arms and legs for days. You becomes them.
 
This is the kind of pulsing choreography explored in Oliver Husain’s new experimental video installation, FRENCH EXIT. Animated by a revolving glass door, entrances lead to exits as inside collapses with outside. Like a game, the work engages a set of rules that play out over the course of the video through methods of improvisation and visual instruction. Refracted through transparent layers and split into lenticular bands, the dancers’ bodies entangle within both the apparatus that records their actions and the architectural space in which they move. Individuality is interrupted while mirrored multiplicity proliferates.
 
As accompaniment, Husain will present new drawings based on a panoramic photo series of West Edmonton Mall. Entitled Epilogue - ISM3D at WEM, the drawings survey a replica of Christopher Columbus’ flagship, La Santa María. Extending the artist’s recent video project Isla Santa Maria 3D, these works picture the overlapping politics of colonialism within the apparent dazzle of capitalism.

Artist ( Description ): 

Oliver Husain is a filmmaker and artist based in Toronto. He uses a wide range of cinematic languages and visual codes – such as dance, puppetry and animation – to disassemble and subvert fixed readings of the original material. His installations, performances and films set up narratives that charm or fold the views into questioning their role as a spectator or subject.

Recent solo exhibitions include Roving at the Remai Modern and Isla Santa Maria 3D at Gallery TPW. His films have been shown at MAK Vienna, Surrey Art Gallery and NKV Wiesbadan and screened at Reel Asian Film Festival, Toronto, Mumbai International Film Festival and Bangalore Queer Film Festivals.

Telephone: 
416.504.3699
Venue ( Address ): 

137 Tecumseth Street
Toronto, Canada
M6J 2H2

Other events from Susan Hobbs Gallery

view
Derek Sullivan: Field Works
04/18/2024 to 05/25/2024
view
Gareth Long: Delaware Abstract Corporation
01/18/2024 to 02/24/2024
view
Patrick Cruz: CANADA
11/30/2023 to 01/13/2024
view
Kevin Yates: No Room for Monsters
10/19/2023 to 11/25/2023

Pages

 

Related Shows This Week

view
Kent Manske: Making Sense
03/21/2024 to 04/28/2024
view
Monty Montgomery Opening Reception: “Intersection”
03/10/2024 to 04/28/2024
view
LORI COZEN-GELLER ||| THE HUMAN CONDITION
10/18/2023 to 12/16/2024
view
Art of Freedom 2
03/18/2024 to 04/07/2024
view
Debbi Kenote and Mark Sengbusch: Cross Cut
03/08/2024 to 04/20/2024
view
Abi Joy Samuels: 4' 33"
03/02/2024 to 03/30/2024
view
„APA- interferențe culturale”
03/20/2024 to 05/20/2024
view
Oldies and Goodies
03/07/2024 to 04/08/2024

Pages