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Indepth Arts News:
"Aernout Mik: Video Installation"
2001-09-23 until 2001-11-18
Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery
Toronto, ON,
CA
Dutch artist Aernout Mik creates video installations that are characterized by a blend of uneasy absurdity and uncanny realism. For his first major exhibition in North America, Mik premieres a new work that combines the reconfigured architecture of the gallery with ten video projections playing on five projectors. At the flip of a switch, one set of five projections
displaces another in the same space.
Titled Reversal Room, the installation creates several overlapping spatial and visual realities in which the spectator seems to become an unwitting participant in a new architectural space and the situations played out in the videos.
Mik's works have the feel of a film shoot where actions are scripted and filmed within the close confines of the set and framings of the camera. Groups of people behave oddly, intentions are not clear, activities have patterns but no beginning or end. At times inexplicable or disquieting, Mik's installations examine the dynamics of the social, political and aesthetic
relationships of everyday life.
Born in Groningen, Netherlands, in 1962, Aernout Mik lives in Amsterdam. Since 1987, he has been presented in solo exhibitions throughout Europe including Institute of Contemporary Arts, London (2000), Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven, Netherlands (2000) and in 1997 he represented the Netherlands at the Venice Biennale.
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