DEREK BRUNEN

2014

Oct 31

LUMIN-HAUS, RIVERSIDE PARK

Ranging from video and performance to photography and installation, Derek Brunen’s work draws inspiration from the histories of art, cinema and popular culture. While attempting to locate these discussions within his own experience, Brunen investigates fundamental questions around the complex differences between systems of knowledge and systems of belief. Paying special attention to the “visible” world, memory, consciousness and the aesthetics of disappearance have also emerged as essential themes throughout Brunen’s practice.

Recent exhibitions include: “Artist’s Choice: Cock and Bull”, Vancouver Art Gallery (2014), “The Way of the Shovel: Art as Archaeology”, Museum of Contemporary Art (Chicago, 2013), “In Search Of…”, Academy Minerva and the Christian Reformed Church (Groningen and Nieuwe Beerta, NL, 2012), “Again and Again and Again: Serial Formats and Repetitive Actions”, Vancouver Art Gallery (2012), “Rapid Waking”, ZINGERpresents (Amsterdam, 2011) and “Don’t Come if You Care”, Sils Project Space (Rotterdam, 2011).

Plot is a durational performance for the camera, documenting the artist digging a grave from beginning to end. The resulting six-hour video operates as a tableau, registering the shifting light and weather conditions throughout the day. In addition to his many breaks and subsequent fatigue, Brunen’s labour is featured, eventually finding resolution in the artist’s disappearance. The work also expands to other iterations, including a scale photograph of the empty excavation, a tombstone marking the public location (which reads as a museum object label), as well as a more recent rubbing of this stone. Taking its cue from early conceptual works of the 60s and 70s, Plot contemplates perceptions of time and the relationship between duration and subjectivity. The video also tests the attention span of the average viewer, while at the same time questioning contemporary spectatorship and the expectations placed on artists today. Plot challenges Western society’s obsession with health and its imperative to control chance outcomes, ultimately striving to embrace or proclaim the very thing beyond our control.

http://derekbrunen.hotglue.me/plo t
http://youtu.be/w5s32q3FIBc http://youtu.be/QNMEMhXzaRk