Aryen Hoekstra

4 September 2014 - 25 October 2014
Opening Reception 5 September 2014 7pm

Artist talk at 6:30PM, followed by reception at 7:30PM Friday 5 September 2014

The screen as both apparatus and space of political potential is central to the work of Aryen Hoekstra (b. 1982 Edmonton, lives and works in Toronto). In his film and sculptural installations, Hoekstra proposes a disjuncture in the passages of time and concepts of progress inherent in modernity. Juxtaposing digital and analogue means he explores the potential of slippage to question the authority of the image.

Choreography for Screen aligns eye and body. Referencing the height of Hollywood’s ‘classic era’; the films of collective choreographed dance and song with Fred Astaire, Bing Crosby, Ginger Rogers and Rita Hayworth, their cultural role is progressively abstracted. A 16mm film sequence captures sequins on a piece of fabric, as opposed to a segue into an epic dance routine, its continuous looping flickers like a light play on water or aerial nighttime surveillance. The global backdrop of the 1940s manifests, choreographed movements, rather than dance, become abstractions of troop deployments, delineations of enemy lines, and the screen as a space of propaganda.

Originating in the formal and conceptual language of the moving-image, Hoekstra identifies the relationship between ‘image’ and ‘darkness’ as a site of radical potentiality. He examines the effects of the screen-ic mediation of moving-images on the shaping of behaviour, gesture and thought throughout modernity and the spectre thus cast upon our contemporary condition.

Choreography for Screen is Hoekstra’s first solo exhibition in Canada.

Aryen Hoekstra received his MFA from the University of Guelph and BFA from the University of Alberta. Recent and upcoming exhibition venues include, Scotiabank Nuit Blanche (Toronto, ON); Forest City Gallery (London, ON); Modern Fuel (Kingston, ON); Blackwood Gallery (Mississauga, ON); Xpace Cultural Centre (Toronto, ON); Olga Korper Gallery (Toronto, ON). His writing on contemporary art has appeared in C Magazine, Border Crossings and Towards Magazine. Since Spring 2014 Hoekstra has served as the Director of G Gallery in Toronto, ON.

Aryen Hoekstra would like to thank the Ontario Arts Council (OAC) for their generous support. Produced with the assistance of the Liaison of Independent Filmmakers of Toronto (LIFT).