ENDGAME
A back alley is negative space, a liminal zone between the architectural order on either side—stage for the shady and dangerous. In Endgame, giant inflatable clown heads are stuck between two buildings high over an alley.

The heads are made of vinyl from recycled billboards. Referring to the history of collage as a tool for turning propaganda against itself, the artist has stated: “There is something satisfying in reshaping corporate ads into something whimsical, generous or even scary. Clowns on their own embody a certain tension; we expect them to be funny and yet many people experience them as sinister. The tension here is physical as the heads are held in place by their own internal air pressure. Their squeezed and distorted expressions add to a sense of urgency. It is a situation that invites any number of imaginative narratives. Perhaps they are renegade parade balloons whose joyride has gone tragically wrong. In any case, these happy-go-lucky characters are now pinned in a back alley. While still monumental, they are now vulnerable in a way that invites a kind of empathy, but possibly a guilty empathy, or schadenfreude, fear combined with the pleasing anticipation of a spectacularly destructive end.

ISO3D
Grey Canada and The Media Merchants hosted an all-night projected installation at Toronto’s Union Station sponsored by Sensodyne iso-active tooth paste. The project, called “iso3D”, showcased the product’s foaming action and is to date the largest branded, 3-D projection mapping display in Canada.

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.