ALL AT ONCE, 2016 Sculpture/Installation Thesis Exhibitions' Series presents: Inheriting Crisis by Adrian Cohen-Gallant
Opening: Thursday March 31, 6 – 9 pm
OCAD University's Sculpture/Installation Program is presenting a series of seventeen exhibitions featuring the multi-media artworks of its 4th-year Thesis students in professional galleries in Toronto. This series is made possible by the generous support of the Nora Vaughan Bequest to the Sculpture/Installation program and of the Faculty of Art Innovation Fund.
Inheriting Crisis is a series of mechanical demonstrations constructed to investigate the crisis humanity inherits from generations of colonial expansion and resource extraction.
The overriding motivation of this body of work is to rigorously interrogate the fundamental assumptions upon which our civilization depends. The scope of this endeavour spans from the origins of the human species, to the cutting edge of scientific pursuit.
To this end, mechanical demonstrations have been constructed. These machines are conceived as metaphorically representing a cultural dynamic by translating its functionality into the mechanism of a machine.
These demonstrations are meant to become a physical and experiential embodiment of such a cultural dynamic. These dynamics and the assumptions that underline them are so normalized, that it is difficult to investigate them critically. Translated to the logic of mechanisms, the absurdity of their guiding logic becomes notably easier to grasp. The experience and investigation of these demonstrations provides the viewer with a reference which they can continue to use to interrogate the dynamics demonstrated.
http://adrian-cohen-gallant.format.com/