TORONTO ADSCAPES

I just returned home from Nuit Blanche. While the event itself is one giant advertisement for Scotia Bank, there was one interesting exhibit that was more of a social commentary about advertising.

The installation, SPEED SHIFT, places two artificial visual realities, Minimal Art and advertising billboards, in unmediated juxtaposition. Consumer society made Oscar Wilde’s aphorism “Life imitates art far more than art imitates Life” into “Life imitates commercials far more than commercials imitate Life.” Advertising has taken over society

The light and sound installation overlays two constructed visual realities (Minimal Art and advertising billboards) to form a luminous underground passage. Fifty-five meters of white LED lights are secured onto a wall of advertising in the Eaton Centre, displaying two wave patterns combined with a rhythmic sound layer, that moves in varying speeds over time. Eventually, the two elements meet up in the hallway’s centre.
–http://www.scotiabanknuitblanche.ca/exhibition.aspx?zone=A&mapID=8

Erwin Redl studied Computer Art at School of Visual Arts, New York and Music Composition and Electronic Music at the Music Academy, Vienna, Austria.

The artist participated in the 2002 Whitney Biennial. Most recently he created a sound and light installation for the Austrian Pavilion at the World Expo 2008 in Zaragoza, Spain.

Redl’s work is represented in major international art collections, among them the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego and the Milwaukee Art Museum.