| Ryan Park | January 10 – Februrary 22, 2014 |
Ryan Park works across a variety of media and subjects, his projects reflecting the material and poetic possibilities suggested by a subject’s salient characteristics.
For his exhibition at G Gallery, Park presents recent video works that use projected light as subject and material. In the video installation Dark is the night (Voyager), a wind-up emergency radio/flashlight is used to play back a signal of the entire Voyager Golden Record – the record of Earth sounds and music attached to the Voyager space probes and launched into deep space in 1977. The broken radio battery no longer holds a charge, requiring a constant exertion of activity in order to both receive the signal, and materialize it through sound and light. The video, Rabbit, tracks the 20-minute lifespan of a shadow puppet.
Light, shadow, visibility, transmission and physical exertion become elements in works that meditate on the drive to transmit and receive signals; the lifespan of cultural creations; limitations of the human body; and as an evocation of communicative labour within a dark, vast universe.
Ryan Park is a Toronto based artist who makes artworks using mostly video, photography, and manipulations of found material. His work has been shown across Canada, the USA, and Europe.
Ryan Park gratefully acknowledges the support of the Ontario Arts Council.
