Micah Lexier | |
---|---|
Born | 1960 Winnipeg, Manitoba |
Nationality | Canadian |
Education | University of Manitoba, Nova Scotia College of Art and Design |
Known for | Sculpture |
Micah Lexier (born 1960 in Winnipeg, Manitoba) [1] is a Canadian artist and curator. He was educated at the University of Manitoba (BFA, 1982) and the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design (MFA, 1984). He is represented by Birch Contemporary (Toronto). He lives and works in Toronto. [2] In 2015 he was awarded the Governor General's Award in Visual and Media Arts.
Lexier combines conceptual art with sculpture. Lexier expresses the concepts he has developed through sculptural means, using ready-mades or materials prepared using industrial processes.
In a work in the collection of the Art Gallery of Ontario, A work of art in the form of a quantity of coins equal to the number of months of the statistical life expectancy of a child born January 6, 1995 (1995), [3] Lexier creates a portrait of a person using coins. A series of coins are neatly ordered in a box; in an adjacent box, loose coins sit in a gradually growing pile. Every month, another coin gets transferred from the first box to the other. Together, the 906 coins represent the life of an individual; the transfer of coins notates the passage of time. This work embodies a number of themes that are central to Lexier's art practice: timelines; life span; mortality; and the ordering of things and their undoing. [1] [3]
Lexier works in series; starting with a simple idea, he explores it in a systematic fashion. Series by Lexier include, Book Sculptures (1993), A Minute of My Time (1996-2000), Arrows (started 2004), Revelations (started 2005), and various collaborations with other artists and individuals.[ citation needed ] Lexier's interest in ephemera adds another dimension to his practice. He makes posters, exhibition invites, T-shirts, and other art multiples to create parallel lives for his artworks, extending his art practice out of the gallery and into the world. In 2010, the Press of the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design published, I'm Thinking of a Number, [4] a 30-year survey which documents this aspect of his practice.
David: Then & Now (2005) is an example of how Lexier extends ideas by reworking them. It consists of adjacent portraits of people named ‘David’. The portraits are of the same person taken 10 years apart, first in 1993 and then a decade later. In keeping with Lexier's overall approach to artmaking, the work's emotional tone is muted, yet it dramatizes the universal fact of aging. A temporary public artwork, the project was seen on bus shelters throughout Winnipeg. The work is a follow-up to an earlier piece by Lexier, A Portrait of David (1994), which presents 75 portraits displayed on a freestanding wall. Each portrait is of a male named ‘David’, arranged chronologically from age one through 75. [5] [6]
Lexier is often the subject of his work. He has said, "Everything an artist does is portraiture, in a way". [7] This is true of his on-going series, A Minute of My Time (born 1995), in which scribbles the artist makes over the course of a minute are transformed in a variety of ways, including: factory-produced water-cut metal sculptures, etchings, custom minted coins, [8] lines sewn onto pieces of paper, spray-painted graffiti, and chalkboard drawings. The work memorializes the fleeting trace of the artist's hand as a timeless monument.
A 2009 work, I Am the Coin, [9] was commissioned by the BMO Financial Group. An example of the artist's interest in serial forms of measurement, I Am the Coin, features a grid of 20,000 custom-made coins, each minted with a letter. Together the coins spell out a story, written by the writer Derek McCormack. [10]
In addition to working with McCormack, Lexier has collaborated with the Canadian poet, Christian Bök [11] and the Irish writer, Colm Tóibín. In 2008, Lexier produced a project with Tóibín and the entire student body of Cawthra Park Secondary School. Lexier commissioned the Irish author to write a short story that was exactly 1334 words long, one word for every student in the school. Each student then handwrote one of the 1334 words that make up the story, which was published in an 8-page newspaper that was given away. [12]
Lexier has produced over a dozen public sculptures, often involving the repetition of large quantities of a specific item. For example, Ampersand (2002) is a public art work located in the Leslie subway station on the Sheppard line of Toronto's TTC public transit system. The work consists of 17,000 ceramic tiles featuring the text ‘Leslie’ and ‘Sheppard’ as handwritten by thousands of different individuals. As with his David portraits, this work, in the words of the artist, "acknowledges the duality of being both an individual and part of a larger community."
His curatorial projects have included One, and Two, and More Than Two at The Power Plant, Toronto; A to B at MKG127, Toronto; [13] Here Now or Nowhere, Grande Prairie; Alberta (2009); The For Example series, Mount Saint Vincent Art University Art Gallery, Halifax (2007–2009); and Audio By Artists, a festival at the Centre for Art Tapes and Eye Level Gallery, Halifax (1984/1985/1986). Lexier is co-editor with Dan Lander of Sound By Artists, co-published by Art Metropole and Walter Phillips Gallery (1990). A second edition of Sound By Artists was published by Charivari Press in 2013. Since 2006, Lexier has been Visual Art Editor, for Bloom [14] , Los Angeles.
The Group of Seven, once known as the Algonquin School, was a group of Canadian landscape painters from 1920 to 1933, originally consisting of Franklin Carmichael (1890–1945), Lawren Harris (1885–1970), A. Y. Jackson (1882–1974), Frank Johnston (1888–1949), Arthur Lismer (1885–1969), J. E. H. MacDonald (1873–1932), and Frederick Varley (1881–1969). A. J. Casson (1898–1992) was invited to join in 1926, Edwin Holgate (1892–1977) became a member in 1930, and Lionel LeMoine FitzGerald (1890–1956) joined in 1932.
Mary Frances Pratt, LL. D. D.Litt. was a Canadian painter known for photo-realist still life paintings. Pratt never thought of her work as being focused on one subject matter: her early work is often of domestic scenes, while later work may have a darker undertone, with people as the central subject matter. She painted what appealed to her, being emotionally connected to her subject. Pratt often spoke of conveying the sensuality of light in her paintings, and of the "erotic charge" her chosen subjects possessed.
NSCAD University is a public art university in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. The university is a co-educational institution that offers bachelor's and master's degrees. The university also provides continuing education services through its School of Extended Studies.
David Alexander Colville, LL. D. was a Canadian painter and printmaker who continues to achieve both popular and critical success.
Kelly Richardson is a Canadian artist working with digital technologies to create hyper-real landscapes. She is currently a professor at the Department of Visual Arts of the University of Victoria.
Emanuel Otto Hahn was a German-born Canadian sculptor and coin designer. He taught and later married Elizabeth Wyn Wood. He co-founded and was the first president of the Sculptors' Society of Canada.
John Greer is a Canadian sculptor who likes to bring cultural and natural history together. One critic calls him one of Canada's most philosophically minded artists. He looks to ancient Celtic stones and Greek sculpture for inspiration. Greer was the catalyst behind "Halifax Sculpture," a 1990s movement, rooted in minimalism and conceptualism.
Canadian art refers to the visual as well as plastic arts originating from the geographical area of contemporary Canada. Art in Canada is marked by thousands of years of habitation by Indigenous peoples followed by waves of immigration which included artists of European origins and subsequently by artists with heritage from countries all around the world. The nature of Canadian art reflects these diverse origins, as artists have taken their traditions and adapted these influences to reflect the reality of their lives in Canada.
Hamilton Thomas Carlton Plantagenet MacCarthy was one of the earliest masters of monumental bronze sculpture in Canada. He is known for his historical sculptures, in particular his Pierre Dugua, Sieur de Mons at Annapolis Royal, Nova Scotia (1904) as well as Samuel de Champlain overlooking Parliament Hill on Nepean Point, Ottawa (1915), next to the National Gallery of Canada. His monument to the Ottawa volunteers who died in the South African War (1902) was moved to Confederation Park in 1969 after several moves. Other works include that of Ottawa mayor, Samuel Bingham, in Notre-Dame Cemetery in Vanier.
Kelly Mark is a Canadian conceptual artist and sculptor based in Toronto. Her work explores the mundane rituals of everyday life.
Brian Groombridge is a Canadian visual artist. He currently lives and works in Toronto, Ontario.
Susan Dobson (born September 19, 1965) is a Canadian artist based in Guelph, Ontario. She is best known for her photographs and installations, many focusing on the theme of urban landscape and suburban culture.
Ursula Johnson is a multidisciplinary Mi’kmaq artist based in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. Her work combines the Mi’kmaq tradition of basket weaving with sculpture, installation, and performance art. In all its manifestations her work operates as didactic intervention, seeking to both confront and educate her viewers about issues of identity, colonial history, tradition, and cultural practice. In 2017, she won the Sobey Art Award.
Kevin Yates is a Canadian visual artist.
Risa Horowitz is a Canadian visual and media artist. Her works have been exhibited across Canada and internationally. Her work has been shown at Canada House in London, England, and is included in its permanent collection. She is currently an associate professor at the University of Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada.
Sandra Brewster is a Canadian visual artist based in Toronto. Her work is multidisciplinary in nature, and deals with notions of identity, representation and memory; centering Black presence in Canada.
Jaime Angelopoulos is a Canadian sculptor based in Toronto. She is noted for using abstract gestural shapes in her work.
Sky Glabush is a Canadian artist based in Southwestern Ontario. He has created works in a number of media, but is best known as a painter. He is an associate professor of visual art at the University of Western Ontario. His work is in the collection of the National Gallery of Canada.
Louise Noguchi is a Canadian multidisciplinary visual artist who uses video, photography, sculpture, and installation to examine notion of identity, perception and reality.
Miya Turnbull is an artist based in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. She is of Japanese and Canadian ancestry and uses this to explore her identity in her work. Her work consists of photography, video, projection, and masks. Miya has had several installations around Canada and internationally. Miya's mask work has been inspired by quotes from Joseph Campbell and Andre Berthiaume.
{{cite journal}}
: Check |url=
value (help)