Kevin Schmidt: Burning Bush

Engaging with the pictorial traditions of landscape, Kevin Schmidt’s representations of nature raise discussions around the sublime and the spectacular. Often employing special effects, Schmidt's work calls on the artifice of theatre and cinema. Many of these works, including recent projects Fog and Long Beach Led Zep, utilize ideas of spiritualism, whether the Romanticism denoted by supernatural fog or the hippie mysticism of 1970’s rock music. Schmidt’s investigations into the genre of landscape take into consideration its long tradition, particularly in Vancouver, and attempt to reimbue it with a qualified optimism.

Schmidt’s most recent project Burning Bush is a durational video projection of a bush in a desert landscape that appears to burn, yet miraculously remains unconsumed. This extended landscape portrait takes its cue from Exodus 3 in which Moses encounters a burning bush through which God speaks. Schmidt’s work plays on contemporary interpretations of this myth and its cooption by Hollywood (as well as the Hollywoodization of the church in which sermons are held in vast movie theatres and stadiums while the live event is projected on the big screen). The work’s intermingling of religious and political mythologies point to the languages, both visual and textual, around faith. Schmidt describes Burning Bush as “a staging of artistic artifice, spiritual symbolism and humanistic concern.” In revealing its construction, Burning Bush extends an invitation to the viewer to participate in a meditation on art historical, pop cultural, political and spiritual references, while presenting the possibility of an experience of wonder.

Since graduating from Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design in 1997, Schmidt has received considerable recognition as an important emerging artist. Select recent exhibitions include Presentation House Gallery (North Vancouver); Frankfurter Kunstverein (Frankfurt); Zierhersmith (New York); Edmonton Art Gallery; Blackwood Gallery (Missassauga); McKenzie Art Gallery (Regina), Fruitmarket Gallery (Edinburgh); and Contemporary Art Gallery (Vancouver).

This exhibition will be accompanied by a publication with a text by Juan Gaitan.

Pressetext

Burning Bush
Kevin Schmidt