Micah Lexier is a Toronto-based multimedia artist whose many-tiered practice includes sculpture, installation, photography and text-based work, as well as curation. Lexier graduated with an MFA from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in 1984.
A video consisting of a number of vignettes in which I present and manipulate items from my archive of used books and found objects.
THIS IS AN ARROW, 2009.
Each arrow is made of waterjet-cut ¼” aluminum and enamel paint, and each arrow has a text etched into the front of it. No two arrows have the same text and each text starts with the phrase This is an arrow followed by a qualifying phrase. For example: This is an arrow pointing at a painting, This is an arrow left unpainted, or This is an arrow two feel long. A number of the above images are from a site-speficic installation installed at the Albright Knox Gallery in Buffalo, NY in 2010.
A Portrait of David, 1994.
Life-size photographs of men and boys named David, one of each each from age 1 to age 75. Commissioned by and presented at The Winnipeg Art Gallery
David Then & Now, 2004.
Bus shelter project presented throughout downtown Winnipeg, presented by Plug In ICA. This is the follow up project to A Portrait of David, in which we photographed one David of every age, from age 1 to age 75. For this project, David Then & Now, we located as many of the original Davids as possible and photographed them exactly 10 years later.
Dave Dyment is Toronto-based artist whose practice includes audio, video, photography, performance, writing and curating, and the production of artists’ books and multiples. His work mines pop culture for shared associations and alternate meanings, investigating the language and grammar of music, cinema, television and literature, in order to arrive at a kind a folk taxonomy of a shared popular vocabulary.
The Morning Has Gold In Its Mouth, 2013
A frame-by-frame account of Kubrick’s The Shining, each annotated with text from fan sites, youtube clips and fan forums. The four-volume set includes countless arcane theories about the director’s intentions.
A lenticular photograph housed in an antique mirror frame. The photograph reflects a nearby dresser and (as in the film) the number of books changes as the viewer passes by.
Timeline, 2016
Video installation, 85 minutes20,000 years of cinematic history condensed into the length of a feature film. Comprised entirely of establishing shots from cinema and television, Timeline begins in the year 17,000 BC and ends in 2805 AD.Presented at Ontario Place, as part of InFuture, 2016.
Sidereal Time, 2009
“Dave Dyment’s mirror ball installation was fantastic. I walked to Victoria Park where most of the events were happening and could see his piece at a distance. As I approached, I could discern how it was made and I thought that hanging a bunch of disco balls from a crane in front of what would become an outdoor dance floor seemed a bit obvious. I was rolling this sort of evaluation around in my head, thinking of what I might write later, but as I got under the deluge of cascading light I lost my balance and was hit with vertigo. Something about the intensity of the stage lighting bouncing off so many mirrored, reflective surfaces resulted in this complete wash or carpeting of tiny, moving discs of light. The space became wholly immersive and the ground was undulating with a gentle yet disorienting wash of pale yet intensely vibrant speckles. I went away convinced by the work’s elegance and simplicity. Dyment’s piece created an insightful instance of something purely visual riffing on the space of music and the exuberant theatricality of an outdoor concert.”
The Day After, Tomorrow
Earthquakes, fires, floods, meteors, air attacks and other doomsday scenarios play on a bank of twenty video monitors. The exhaustive cataloguing amasses a near-comprehensive collection of disaster cinema tropes.The clips are arranged geographically, so that the viewer may watch the rapture arrive around the world simultaneously. Tidal waves hit shores, landmark buildings are destroyed, and general panic ensues.Isolated from any larger context, the apocalypse plays out like fireworks, and the utopian social cooperation that typically follows in catastrophe cinema is unseen, as the clips loop back onto themselves.
I have always had an intense preoccupation with the differing shades of pathos and humour found in the repetitive mundane tasks, routines and rituals of everyday life. Hidden within these spans of time can be found startling moments of poetic individuation, and an imprint of the individual within the commonplace rituals of society. Individuation, especially within this uniformity, although subtle and frequently paradoxical, is something I find myself returning to again and again. Through my ‘will to order’ and my frequently inane sense of humour my objective is the investigation, documentation and validation of these singular ‘marked’ and ‘unmarked’ moments of our lives…
In & Out – 1997 ongoing until 2032
Steel time card racks & punched cards
Current dimensions of installed work is approximately 28 feet
This work was purchased by a private collector in 1999 and he continues to purchase each years cards
Installation view of 1997-2008: Time as Activity at Netwerk Center for Contemporary Art. Aalst, Belgium 2009
Ongoing project where I keep track of my ‘working hours’ in the studio on an old punch clock. Started in 1997, this project will end in 2032 when i turn 65.
Glow House #2 – 2003
House, 40-50 television sets, coaxial cables, splitters & signal booster
Solo off site project for The Ikon Gallery. Birmingham UK, 2003. Curated by Jonathan Watkins & Deborah Kermode
One House & 35-40 television sets distributed throughout and all tuned to the same channel.
The small flicker of light emanating from each TV is then turned into a ‘pulse’ of light throughout the entire house. As the scenes change, from whatever television program is airing at the moment, the house flashes and pulses as all televisions are in sync with one another. Gives the eerie impressions that the entire house has been gutted to create one vast illuminated space. During commercials it is as if fireworks are going off inside…
Edited video from a live 4-hour public performance Public Disturbance where professional actors were hired to pose as couples and reenact various domestic based arguments from movie scipts in a public setting. The actual performance included 3 separate actor-couples each performing different fight scenes. In this video version of the work I focus on just one couple and follow their re-occurring arguement in various locations, over the course of the evening.
Horroridor – 2008
Six-channel video installation
10 minutes
Commissioned by Wayne Baerwaldt for Scotiabank Nuit Blanche, 2008
Utilizing found footage from various genres including horror-thriller-sci/fi-action-drama-comedy. The installation examines Hollywood’s construction of the reaction to the unknown. Horroridor strips away narrative to a non-articulated response of fear, horror, pain, madness, rage and frustration, by isolating men and women screaming to unknown forces that threaten existence.
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