Kevin Schmidt

Kevin Schmidt’s solo exhibition at the Contemporary Art Gallery presents a survey of recent works including two major new pieces, *EDM House* and *High Altitude Balloon Harmless Amateur Radio Equipment*, both made in 2013.

Schmidt is an artist who has consistently developed a body of work that addresses notions of a displaced spectacle, often within a consideration of the sublime. This ongoing proposition is tackled not so much through exclusive references to landscape, of being awestruck at the point of apprehending such beauty and wilderness, but by juxtaposing seemingly disparate elements within these environments. Works are often situated in remote locations, where Schmidt stages remarkable events which transfer elements of urban culture into untouched natural contexts. In this way, he simultaneously examines both the seductive elements of contemporary cultural production and the constructions that surround the idea of nature.

Commissioned by Fogo Island Arts, *EDM House* was produced by the artist over five months during the winter of 2013, using a small cabin in the interior of British Columbia. An abandoned house in the middle of an isolated winter landscape has its outside festooned with garlands of colourful lights akin to a suburban celebratory display. The building also glows from within; the illuminations synchronized to the rhythm of an electronic beat, creating the illusion of a night club in the middle of a secluded mountainous setting. This was the first European homestead in the area, built by Norwegian settlers in 1905, and like many such buildings in the new world, it evokes the desire for a new start away from poverty, crowding or persecution elsewhere.

Electronic Dance Music (EDM) typifies contemporary digital production in that it is disseminated on social media, an online community of enthusiasts, suggesting the individual as an alternative brand. Drawing parallels between the original settlers’ intent to escape to pastures new and contemporary “hobbyist” production or DIY culture as a counter to corporate dominance, Schmidt seeks to interrogate such ideas via a surreal combination of the spectacular. In addition to the light display itself, *EDM House* also functioned as a local radio FM channel, broadcasting the artist’s compositions within a small radius to those few passersby. The eerie nature of happening on this by chance is captured in the video projection, conjuring an occasion that is at once magical yet sinister, delightful yet strange. These anxieties are reflected in the horror-movie technique used to document the work, for as the camera rolls forwards or back, the zoom counteracts meaning the house stays the same size within the frame as the background swells or contracts.

Comprising a home-made camera and a large-format slide projection, *High Altitude Balloon Harmless Amateur Radio Equipment* used a weather balloon to capture an image of the Earth by launching the equipment 35,000 meters into space. Both the timing and the right conditions to release the shutter were carefully calculated so that the camera — made of Styrofoam and duct tape and fitted with a 90-mm Linhof lens and a 4-by-5 inch film holder —pointed away from the sun toward the horizon, the resulting photograph of the stratosphere presented as an immersive projection in the darkness of the gallery. Encounters with such images are usually confined to the internet, low-resolution images limited to the size of a screen. In contrast, here the image takes on an all-encompassing quality as well as a tangible physicality, revealing the curvature of the Earth, the vivid blue curve of its atmosphere, the blackness of space beyond and the surface of clouds, earth and water below. Undeniably beautiful, the image is foiled by the means of its presentation and its production.

Like many of Schmidt’s works, *High Altitude Balloon Harmless Amateur Radio Equipment* makes clear the narrative of its construction and process, unexpected parallels drawn by bringing together different “realities.” This will be elaborated in a forthcoming  accompanying publication made by the artist, a manual for other people detailing how to replicate the project. Device, staging and duration are integral to the contemplation of landscape and culture. Standing between the projector and screen, visitors are silhouetted against the image becoming part of the scene akin to the lone figure in Caspar David Friedrich’s painting *Wanderer above the Sea of Fog* (1818). *High Altitude Balloon Harmless Amateur Radio Equipment* suggests a new form of the sublime — one not indebted to the romantic idea of experiencing nature first-hand, but based on extending human vision by technical means. The image offers us the opportunity of experiencing unseen spaces through the process of looking; the world as contained within the picture.

The combination of settings for the artist’s work, notions of the heroic coupled with seemingly amateur quests, all are recurrent elements in his installations. Schmidt’s interest in the epic expresses the desire to go beyond the limits of knowledge and to chart other territories. Yet in his work manufactured spectacle is tempered by skepticism. Schmidt counters accepted conventions by using visible reminders of handy-man construction and theatrical devices — smoke machines, stage lights and DIY photographic equipment — while seeking to produce experiences that speak to his interest in the tension between doubt and faith. The possibility of art is critically reconsidered by reflecting on the manufactured seductions of spectacle or the romantic search for some truth as embodied within scientific expeditions.

The exhibition in Vancouver is made in collaboration with Kunstverein Braunschweig, Germany.

### Biography

Born in 1972 in Ottawa, Kevin Schmidt lives and works in Vancouver and Berlin. He was the recipient of the Canada Council for the Arts’ International Residencies program at the Künstlerhaus Bethanien in Berlin for 2013 and the Fogo Island Residency Program, Newfoundland in 2011. In 2008, he received the VIVA Award from the Jack and Doris Shadbolt Foundation for the Visual Arts in Vancouver. Recent solo exhibitions include *Don’t Stop Believing*, Justina M. Barnicke Gallery, Toronto; *A Sign in the Northwest Passage* (billboard project), The Power Plant, Toronto; *Epic Journey*, Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal; *A Sign in the Northwest Passage* (as part of *Subjective Projections*), Bielefelder Kunstverein, Germany; Catriona Jeffries Gallery, Vancouver; Galerie van der Mieden, Antwerp; and *Wild Signals*, Galerie Barbara Thumm, Berlin. His works have been in a number of significant group exhibitions including *L’Avenir (looking forward)*, Montreal Biennial (2013); *True North*, Anchorage Museum, Alaska (2012); *Up North*, Art Gallery of Alberta, Edmonton (2011); *How Soon is Now*, Vancouver Art Gallery (2009); *Wild Signals*, Württembergischer Kunstverein Stuttgart (2008); and *Depiction Part IV*, Witte de With, Rotterdam (2007). Schmidt is represented by Catriona Jeffries Gallery, Vancouver.


ProgramGuideSpring2014.pdf

An image of a snowy landscape with a house made of log timber and forested hills behind. In the foreground of the image is a wooden post with a sign that reads “EDM house 88.1 fm.” 

thumbnail_00-HEADER-Schmidt.jpg

00-HEADER-Schmidt.jpg

A white box with small lenses embedded on its side sits in the middle of a white surface. Other objects surround the white box: a black polaroid camera, cords, a wooden dowel, a piece of fabric.

thumbnail_01-KevinSchmidt-2014.jpg

01-KevinSchmidt-2014.jpg

A picture of the earth is projected on a large screen on a black wall. The image depicts a view of the earth from space. Glare from the sun is visible at the upper left corner of the image. 

thumbnail_02-KevinSchmidt-2014.jpg

02-KevinSchmidt-2014.jpg

Video projection on a dark gallery wall of a house in a snowy landscape at night. The house is decorated with strings of colourful lights across the exterior walls and roof. Lights are on inside.

thumbnail_03-KevinSchmidt-2014.jpg

03-KevinSchmidt-2014.jpg

Video projection on a dark gallery wall of a house made of log timber. The house sits in a snowy landscape with forested hills behind. The outdoor light is faint, it's either dusk or dawn. 

thumbnail_04-KevinSchmidt-2014.jpg

04-KevinSchmidt-2014.jpg

The Contemporary Art Gallery opened a unique group exhibition that brought together six British Colombia artists who use the journey as a way to engage with landscape traditions. In *Sentimental Journey*, all the artists went on expeditions, traversing the landscape to collect inspiration and gather materials to document their experiences. The works in Sentimental Journey were both real and fictive representations of often undetermined treks. Many of the works had an optimism that was tied to the landscape, the desire to be outside and the character of the artist/wanderer.

The art works in this context brought forward the tight relation between the journey and its presentation, embracing the romance of the journey while also recontextualizing and privileging the terms of storytelling in order to question sentimentality. *Sentimental Journey* captured sentiments of eighteenth and nineteenth century Romanticism.  Most of the artists in the exhibition kept true to this tradition, using the journey as their primary source of inspiration, translating their journeys materially to create a new experience in its own right. As many of the works in the exhibition showed us, our visual fields are saturated with representations of landscapes, but here the artist’s to reinvigorate our perception of nature through their distinctive working methods.

### Essay by Jenifer Papararo

Romanticism developed across Europe as a movement in visual art, literature and music; it was defined as a return to nature and a search for true understanding of the self. The French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who was identified as a pioneer of Romanticism, crossed the Alps alone on foot, expressing his experience in his autobiography, *Confessions*, published in 1782. The purpose of his long and isolated journeys, Rousseau states, was “to show to my fellow-men a portrait in every way true to nature, and this man I shall portray will be myself.” This desire to find an authentic self is defined by the attempt to break with societal constraints that limit choices and actions and, accordingly, limit the ability to understand and convey the experience of the true self.

This notion of the Romantic thinker—focused on finding and defining the true inner self—reaches across place, time and disciplines. We can easily point to this figure again and again in the visual arts. The romantic artist lingers and is now an identifiable character and at times a caricature of the artist in general. Common to much contemporary art discourse since the mid-twentieth century is a suspicion of this romantic figure and what it represents. Romanticism has always had its critics. Terms such as *sentimental*, *idealistic*, *spiritual*, *individualistic* and *emotional* have commonly been used to undermine the political gestures of Romanticism. Romance is a distraction, interfering with realism and its revolutionary intent. In relation to contemporary art the term is often used derogatorily, disassociated from the political and defined by self-interest; as a movement for the individual. This is characterized by Rousseau’s statement, “Myself alone. I feel my heart and I know men. I am not made like any that I have seen; I venture to believe that I was not made like any that exist.”

*The Wanderer* (1818) by the German painter Casper David Friederich represents a paradigm of this physical and spiritual journey. A lone figure, his back to the picture plane, stands on a mountainous peak above the clouds, observing the vast valley below. Is this isolated figure in a landscape, shown within nature’s awesomeness, enough to convey the experience? Do Friederich’s intentions move beyond evoking the individualistic nature of these transcendental moments and our isolation as humans? Or does he simply intend the work to replicate the experience of awe for the viewer, hoping the representation itself elicits this feeling? A primary question for many artists in this exhibition might have been: Is the pictorial portrayal of the journey enough to capture the interests of a viewer? This led to other questions, such as: Should what is displayed replicate the journey? Does it even need to? Does it represent the experience, or is it a thing unto itself? Are process and presentation so intertwined that they become one, or do they function so differently that there will always be a huge gap between them?

Within the ideals of historical Romanticism, the artwork, like nature, should be experiential. Symbolically, according to the Romantics, nature carries a charge that elicits a transcendental response. This response corresponds, fundamentally, to a sense of awe. I have no doubt that the natural world still carries the power to inspire awe, but it is also hard to ignore how mediated our experiences are. Thus in a true Romantic sense, the goal of a work of art is to elicit emotional response. *Sentimental Journey* was a group exhibition of local artists whose working methods capture sentiments of eighteenth and nineteenth century Romanticism. Most of the artists in the exhibition kept true to this tradition using the journey as their primary source of inspiration, translating their journeys materially, to create a new experience in its own right. As many of the works in the exhibition showed us, our visual fields are saturated with representations of landscapes, and the artist/explorer character is now relegated to the role of day tripper, seeming more performative than earnest.

The Enlightenment’s ideas of reason and rationality are foils to the true Romantic. The precisely ordered ideals and experiences of the Age of Reason become caricatures, something to react against and resist with intuitive response. Who would rationally use a ball as reason enough to embark on a two-month journey from Canada’s west coast to northeast India? Who would enter the woods blindfolded or attempt to build an anti-gravity machine? While not all the artists in *Sentimental Journey* make nature their works’ primary subject, each begins a journey motivated by creative impulse. The work tended to be about their experiences and how those are exhibited, raising questions about the way the artist’s experience translates materially to the viewer through the objects or information presented. For some of these artists, their work must not only recount their travels but also be reenacted, yielding an impact that conveys their journey’s essence, while for others it is more of a slow burn—playing out over many objects and images, unfolding as narrative.

It is clear there is a new Romanticism in the air. It is being wholeheartedly embraced and not filtered tightly through reason or ordered precisely. Of course there are questions. The Romantic figure of the lonely artist who focuses on self-discovery is still a character seen, with some suspicion, as self-indulgent and self-aggrandizing. And nature’s ability to produce a transformative sense of awe that gives the individual a deeper understanding of the self has lost some of its edge. Yet, each work in the exhibition carries an optimism that was tied to Romantic notions of creativity.

Essay: "Sentimental Journey," Jenifer Papararo

A round glass jug sits on an iron support. Water fills one third of the bottle. 

thumbnail_00-HEADER-SentimentalJourney.jpg

00-HEADER-SentimentalJourney.jpg

A dark room with a bench in front of a projection on a screen. It depicts tree tops and distant mountains. In the middle of the frame, a tree with a hole showing the mountains in the back.

thumbnail_01-SentimentalJourney-2009.jpg

01-SentimentalJourney-2009.jpg

An image of a glass vase suspended in the air with string alongside another glass vase on a stand in a gallery. On the back wall, a framed illustration hangs. The frame is half gold, and half white. 

thumbnail_02-SentimentalJourney-2009.jpg

02-SentimentalJourney-2009.jpg

Installation shot of the group show Sentimental journey. A pitched camouflage tent sits on the right side of a gallery. On the left, three images hang on the wall and a tv sits in a corner. 

thumbnail_03-SentimentalJourney-2009.jpg

03-SentimentalJourney-2009.jpg

On the left corner wall, a salon style assortment of framed images, text, notes and objects hang on the wall of a gallery. On the right side, three images hang on the wall and a tv sits in the corner.

thumbnail_04-SentimentalJourney-2009.jpg

04-SentimentalJourney-2009.jpg

A variety of objects are placed on top, inside, and underneath a display case in a gallery space. Along with that, rolled up fabric hangs off the bottom of the case while shoes sit at the bottom. 

thumbnail_05-SentimentalJourney-2009.jpg

05-SentimentalJourney-2009.jpg

Michael Drebert, Owen Kydd, Mike McLean & Laura Trunkey, Gareth Moore, Kevin Schmidt, Kara Uzelman

Sentimental Journey

*Satan, oscillate my metallic sonatas* brings together a variety of works by five Vancouver-based artists whose creative methods "show" violence, implicate danger or threaten retribution.

In the entrance foyer, Althea Thauberger's large photo-laminate poster depicts a young woman. This woman is the subject of Thauberger's *not afraid to die*, a single-channel video at the entrance to the B.C. Binning Gallery. The video was shot in front of a diorama inside BC's Provincial Museum in Victoria, and the soundtrack includes a song sung by the artist. Also in the B.C. Binning Gallery, Michelle Normoyle's ongoing series of photographs, *After Play*, document the chaos of her child's room after play with her toys. Peter Lojewski's occupation as a licensed practical nurse provides subjects for a series of roughly drawn but eloquent paintings depicting hospital wards. Other works invoke revenge fantasies against disparate mythic and historic figures, personal portraits and ruminations on environmental issues.

Pasted to the exterior of the gallery's windows, as well as on hoardings and poster boards around the city, are posters by Alex Morrison. *Patterer's Diary* is a two -part work that features a selection of short autobiographical incidents recalled in the first person past tense, accompanied by a third-person gloss on the events narrated in the poster, which can be seen in the B.C. Binning Gallery.

In the Alvin Balkind Gallery Kevin Schmidt's *Long Beach Led Zep* is a ten minute video featuring the artist playing the song "Stairway to Heaven” on an electric guitar while standing on Vancouver Island's Long Beach. As the palindromic title suggests, *Satan, oscillate my metallic sonatas* draws parallels between depictions and suggestions of violence, and the impulses of mastery and aesthetic delight with which they often coexist or stem from. By expanding on these themes, the exhibition focuses on aestheticizing depictions in acts of control, catharsis and elegy.

A series of framed paintings are mounted on the gallery wall behind the sculpture. The sculpture depicts a white apartment building, on which a blue helicopter is landing. 

thumbnail_01-Public#28-2002.jpeg

01-Public#28-2002.jpeg

Twelve framed paintings are mounted on the gallery wall behind a sculpture. The sculpture depicts a white apartment building, on which a blue helicopter is landing.  

thumbnail_02-Public#28-2002.jpeg

02-Public#28-2002.jpeg

Texts printed on sheets of colourful paper cover the entire windows on CAG’s first floor. Some papers are much larger than the others. They are pink, yellow, blue, green, or white.

thumbnail_03-Public#28-2002.jpeg

03-Public#28-2002.jpeg

Many sheets of colourful paper cover the entire windows on CAG’s first floor. Some papers are much larger than the others. They are pink, yellow, blue, green, or white.

thumbnail_04-Public#28-2002.jpeg

04-Public#28-2002.jpeg

Ten coloured photographs are mounted on the gallery wall. Many of those images depict colourful objects piled up in a room. This room has a white floor and a pink wall.

thumbnail_05-Public#28-2002.jpeg

05-Public#28-2002.jpeg

Many sheets of colourful paper cover the entire windows on CAG’s first floor. They are illuminated at night. Blue, yellow, and green colours are visible from afar. 

thumbnail_06-Public#28-2002.jpeg

06-Public#28-2002.jpeg

A CRT TV is placed on a pedestal installed in the middle of the gallery space. The video played on the TV shows abstract shapes. Some paintings mounted on the wall are visible behind the TV.

thumbnail_07-Public#28-2002.jpeg

07-Public#28-2002.jpeg

This photograph shows a facade of a building that stands by a street. The building is orange and many fliers are attached to the surface of this building. A bear tree stands in front of the building. 

thumbnail_08-Public#28-2002.jpeg

08-Public#28-2002.jpeg

A single-channel video is projected on the wall inside a darkened gallery space. The video depicts a person playing a guitar on a seashore. The blue ocean is visible behind the person. 

thumbnail_09-Public#28-2002.jpeg

09-Public#28-2002.jpeg

This photograph documents the entrance of the exhibition titled Satan, oscillate my metallic sonatas. A photograph of a woman standing in a forest is installed below the exhibition title. 

thumbnail_10-Public#28-2002.jpeg

10-Public#28-2002.jpeg

Althea Thauberger, Kevin Schmidt, Michelle Normoyle, Peter Lojewski, Alex Morrison

Satan, oscillate my metallic sonatas

An interdisciplinary artist working across performance, video, photography and installation who has exhibited widely across North America and Europe, Schmidt is perhaps best known for performance expeditions and interventions into the natural world, which are documented in photographs, installations and videos.

Schmidt addresses the tensions between man and nature, performance and document, indoors and outdoors, combining notions of the heroic with the seemingly amateur by using visible reminders of construction and theatrical devices — smoke machines, stage lights and DIY photographic equipment. Works are often situated in remote locations, where the artist stages remarkable events that transfer elements of urban culture into untouched natural contexts, such as Aurora with Roman Candle, which shows him firing roman candles at the Aurora Borealis, and his eleven-and-a-half hour Epic Journey.



thumbnail_Kevin-Schmidt-1-600x600.jpeg

Kevin-Schmidt-1-600x600.jpeg

thumbnail_Kevin-Schmidt-2-768x768.jpeg

Kevin-Schmidt-2-768x768.jpeg

thumbnail_Kevin-Schmidt-3-768x768.jpeg

Kevin-Schmidt-3-768x768.jpeg

*LANDSCAPE* is the first in a series of three publications that used the petit genres of landscape, still life and portraiture to reflect programming at the Contemporary Art Gallery which framed tendencies in contemporary art.

Published by the Contemporary Art Gallery in 2010, contributing writers include Michael Turner and Jenifer Papararo, as well as interviews between Tim Gardner and Stephen Waddell; and BGL and Adrian Blackwell. This publication includes the exhibitions; BGL, Tim Gardner and *Sentimental Journey*.

### Other publications from this series:

*STILL LIFE*

*PORTRAIT*

Purchase all three publications for $25 below.

thumbnail_LANDSCAPE-1-600x600.jpg

LANDSCAPE-1-600x600.jpg

thumbnail_LANDSCAPE-2-768x768.jpg

LANDSCAPE-2-768x768.jpg

thumbnail_LANDSCAPE-3-768x768.jpg

LANDSCAPE-3-768x768.jpg

thumbnail_LANDSCAPE-4-768x768.jpg

LANDSCAPE-4-768x768.jpg

petit genres

LANDSCAPE

*Public 28* is a journal of contemporary cultural issues co-published in 2002 by the Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver; and Public Access, Toronto to accompany the group exhibition *Satan Oscillate My Metallic Sonatas* at CAG November 15, 2002 – January 5, 2003.

This issue, *Public #28: Satan Oscillate My Metallic Sonatas* is edited by Reid Shier and William Wood. The journal includes a CD along with contributions from Rodney Graham, Phillip McCrum, Althea Thauberger, Michael Turner, Geoffrey Farmer, Marina Roy, Michael Euyung Oh, William Wood, Ron Terada, Steven Shearer, Kevin Schmidt, Peter Culley, Reid Shier, Peter Mahovsky, Peter Hudson, Neil Wedman, Amy Pederson.

Kevin Schmidt

Exhibitions

Publications & Editions