"Noam Gonick and Luis Jacob: Wildflowers of Manitoba Film Installation"
2007-12-15 until 2008-01-26
Plug In, ICA
Winnipeg, MB, CA Canada

After its celebrated premiere at the 2007 Biennale de Montreal and a showing at the Toronto International Film Festival, Plug In Institute of Contemporary Art kicks off the winter season by bringing Wildflowers of Manitoba back to its place of inspiration. Filmed near Beaconia beach on Lake Winnipeg, this dream-like, multi-screen film installation by Noam Gonick and Luis Jacob explores pastoral visions, idyllic fantasies, and queer transgression. Housed in a geodesic dome where an anonymous flower child slumbers, the geometric frame swells with hallucinatory visions of a tribe of nude boy-folk exploring the splendours of the Canadian Prairies. Their wistful wanderings and homosocial activity animate a mythical vision of Utopia as a blissful, sensual – and sexual – return to the land. Staged for the camera, yet chasing spiritual transcendence, the set and subjects evoke the spirit of alternative collective lifestyles.

This exhibition highlights the work of two prominent artists working together for the first time. Gonick was born in Winnipeg, studied at Ryerson University, and currently teaches in film studies at the Ontario College of Art + Design. He is a celebrated filmmaker and screenwriter whose credits include the documentary Waiting for Twilight (1997), the tele-vision series Psychic Saturday Night (1999), and the features Hey, Happy! (2001) and Stryker (2004). He recently screened new work in Toronto’s Nuit Blanche festival.

Jacob was born in Lima, Peru, studied at the University of Toronto, and has quickly established an international career. He is a writer, curator, and artist whose work has been exhibited at the Toronto Sculpture Garden, the Art Gallery of Ontario, documenta 12 in Kassel, Germany, and We Can Do This Now at the Power Plant in Toronto. The first large-scale retrospective of his work, A Dance for those of us whose Hearts have Turned to Ice, and other Works, is currently on display at the Belkin Gallery at UBC in Vancouver.

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