Produce, Consume transforms grunt gallery’s media lab into a multifaceted playground of website artworks and displays. Visit grunt gallery for this special weeklong exhibition that invites the public to access and explore new tools for sharing, seeing, and becoming.

Matt Troy, grunt’s Media Lab artist-in-residence, has invited artists and teams around the globe to participate and facilitate interactive art websites. The exhibition includes the premiere of three commissioned artworks by Vancouver-based artists Patrick Daggitt, Dan Leonard, and Sammy Chien. Five international artworks will be screened by Kim Asendorf (Germany), Michael Borris (France), Joseph Yølk Chiocchi (United States of America), Chris Collins (United States of America) and James Hicks (United Kingdom).

These nine art sites include a tool to create something: a file, jpeg, mp3, gif, or text. Each file explores a component of human sensory interaction: sound and audio; touch and feeling; seeing and being seen; commerce and language. User engagement with these tools creates a file that is catalogued and immortalized forever online.

The role of the traditional ‘artist’ is subverted as the artists act as faciltators, programmers or playground supervisors within this online landscape. The audience is encouraged to explore these digitally created tools, producing new works by interaction and participation.

Join us at grunt gallery on Friday March 28 (7-10pm) for the opening reception of Produce, Consume. This exhibition runs until Saturday April 5th.

grunt gallery gratefully acknowledges the Canada Council’s Project Grants to Media Arts Organizations, Groups and Collectives for making this exhibition possible. grunt gallery would also like to thank their operating funders: Audain Foundation, City of Vancouver, and the British Columbia Arts Council.

Mounira Al Solh, The Sea Is A Stereo, 2007- ongoing (Courtesy of Sfeir-Semler gallery Beirut and Hamburg)

Exhibition Title: “The Sea Is A Stereo”
Artist: Mounira Al Solh
Opening: Thu, October 11, 2012, 7-10pm
Dates: Thu. 11 October 2012 – Sat, 1 December 2012

Description:

“The Sea Is A Stereo” by artist Mounira Al Solh, introduces us to a group of men who swim daily at a beach in Beirut, Lebanon. This practice of swimming takes place despite varying circumstances relating to weather, the change of seasons, and the conflict of war and politics. The work is made up of several elements that use video, photographs and audio-recorded interviews. While these men are connected through their swimming ritual, Al Solh further connects these men to their surroundings, practice and socio-political issues by means of a visual and audio-based installation. This exhibition will take place in the main front room at grunt gallery.

“…Every day they turn their back to the city where they live to dive in the sea. As if they voluntarily wait on a threshold, finding a comfortable place for themselves between emigration and immigration.”
– Mounira Al Solh speaks about “The Sea Is A Stereo.”

The exhibition will also include a newly created work by Mounira Al Solh, entitled, “A Double Burger and Two Metamorphoses: a proposal for a Dutch Cat, a Dutch Dog, a Dutch Donkey, a Dutch Goat and finally, a Dutch Camel”. An ongoing project created in 2010, the artist forces herself to be locked inside an empty house for three days while she communicates through scripted conversations. Al Solh talks both as herself and as different animal personas: “We speak about the difficulty of reading different philosophers and thinkers like Rousseau, Lyotard, Taussig and Multatuli. And also about the impossibility to dance slow, or to get a hug or a kiss when most needed, for instance.” Through this theatrical process, Al Solh finds a method to refer to the process of waiting for residency through video and the construction of cuckoo clocks, which operate as an Entr’acte, meaning “between the acts.” This project will be exhibited in the gruntKitchen Media Lab.

The exhibition will run at grunt gallery from October 11th to December 1st , 2012. This exhibition is a part of the Institutions by Artists week; Vancouver artist-run centres and community partners will present special projects that link to the themes of the Convention.

Bio:

Mounira Al Solh studied painting at the Lebanese University in Beirut (LB), and Fine Arts at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam (NL). Al Solh is currently doing a research residency at AIR in Antwerp for making the third NOA magazine issue. She has had solo shows at Sfeir-Semler Gallery in Beirut and at Kunsthalle Lisbon in Portugal. Among many others she has exhibited at New Museum, New York in 2012; Haus Der Kunst, Munich; Manifesta 8, Murcia, Spain; The Guild Art Gallery, Mumbai; Stedelijk Museum Bureau Amsterdam, The Netherlands; and Al Riwaq Art Space, Manama, Bahrain – all in 2010; and at Arizona State University Art Museum, Tempe; the Galerie Nord, Kunstverein Tiergarten, Berlin; and the 11th International Istanbul Biennial in 2009. Her video Rawane’s Song received the 2007 jury prize at VideoBrasil. Her video installation As If I Don’t Fit There was part of the first Lebanese Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2007. (http://www.mouniraalsolh.com/)