Kevin Schmidt Works

1984 Chevrolet Caprice Classic Wagon, 94000kms, Good Condition, Engine Needs Minor Work, $1200 OBO, 604 888 3243
20005 C-Prints
16 x 20 in

In 2000, I was asked to be in a landscape photography show at the Surrey Art Gallery. I was living in Tofino at the time—one of the only places in Canada where there are ocean waves big enough to surf on. To earn money, I was commuting to Vancouver every week to teach life drawing classes at an animation school. This meant a lot of driving and my car was a massive station wagon using a lot of gasoline. Moreover, it was starting to break down.

I decided to try and sell my car through the photography exhibition. My parents had bought a generator in 1999 as they were worried about Y2K—a time when many thought the world was going to end because all the computer chips at that time were not programmed to account for the millennial rollover. I borrowed this generator, rented a large strobe kit and took photos of my car in front of beautiful landscapes, the idea being to create something akin to an advertising campaign.

The photos were displayed in the gallery for the exhibition. I titled the work as though it was a classified newspaper ad, listing the details about the car, my proposed price and my phone number at the time, so any viewers seeing the work could call me to buy the car.

I didn’t sell it during the exhibition. However, the Surrey Art Gallery bought the work for its collection, for more than the car was worth. It was at this point that I realized it might be possible for me to make a living as an artist.

Long Beach Led Zep 2002
SD video
9 min 12 sec loop

I play Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven” on a deserted wilderness beach, which was once a hippy settlement on Vancouver Island in the 1970s. I wanted to combine things that had become overly familiar—sunsets on the beach, depictions of wilderness, and ideas of rebellion and freedom incorporated in the histrionic strains of the song—in such a way that would redeem them. At first the work seems to be in jest, with such an over-the-top combination of sentimentality. Initially stumbling, my playing becomes increasingly confident, waves crash and the sunset deepens behind me, and what was merely humorous in the beginning becomes beautiful.

The work is an assertion of the commons, of space open to public use. It declares this not only for physical space, but also for the space of culture, by using a song which commodified the utopian ideals of the 1960s.

Fog 2004
medium-format transparencies, slide projectors, walls
projection size: 8 x 8 ft

Fog is about the desire for illusion and the ultimate betrayal of this. It consists of two medium-format slide projectors beaming images of dry ice fog taken at night in a forest. The images take cues from fantasy and horror to create spaces of imagination.

The two images are placed so that they cannot be seen at the same time; viewers must move through the space to see both. The pictures are the only source of light in the space, presented as if they are the only thing that exists.

Bottom left and right: direct scans of the Fog transparencies.

Fog Studies
2004
LightJet photo
24 x 24 in

The Fog Studies were made in preparation for the final Fog installation images

Fog Study
2004
LightJet photo
24 x 24 in

Fog (Artist Talk) 2004
audio files
25 min 13 sec

When asked to do an artist talk about the installation of Fog at Presentation House Gallery in 2004, I decided to replace the usual academic rhetoric with that of a rock show. I wrote a set of songs and put together a band to play them. Projected behind me were the lyrics that I sang, like opera surtitles. I recorded these songs and PHG published them as a CD.

I performed the songs with a different band at Mercer Union in 2005, for the Fog installation there, and at Art Metropole (inside Toronto’s MOCA) in 2019 for the launch of the Kevin Schmidt monograph for Black Dog Press.

1. The Best Way to Start

2. Lament for the Avante Guarde

3. Plato’s Cave by Way of the Eagles

4. Photographs Take Longer To Fade

5. Artificial Supernatural

6. The Whistle Blowers Know

Burning Bush 2005
HD video
5 hr loop

Burning Bush is a five-hour static shot of fake electric fires rigged onto a desert sage bush—the running time determined by the opening hours of the gallery where it was to be shown, so that viewers would never see the looping point. The video begins at dawn and continues until noon, its audio the ambient sounds of the filming location: crickets, birds, wind.

Burning Bush is meant to disrupt the way viewers consume video. Often, when one arrives at the loop point in a work, one can consider the work “consumed” and can move on to the next. In this case what should obviously be a loop has been drawn out. Viewers wait for the repeat point but it never arrives, leaving only the bodily experience of watching and determining meaning, much like Moses in the biblical story upon which this work is based.

Making Burning Bush took three different attempts over three years; lightning strikes, torrential downpours, a rancher divebombing us with an airplane, heat exhaustion, and generators running out of gas. The images showing this struggle have become part of the narrative of the work. I have used these stills in catalogs and invitations for the gallery installations.

Dungeon Crawl 2006
foam, balsa wood, plaster, paint
12 × 17 × 24 in

In 2006, I began working with the gallerist Catriona Jeffries. That summer she moved the gallery from a small storefront located on a main street to a large building in an industrial area, inaugurating the new space with a group exhibition comprising a new work from each of the gallery artists.

I created a model of the newly renovated gallery in the style of tabletop role-playing games, such as Warhammer or Dungeons and Dragons. I followed how-to instructions on making such sets for gaming that I found online. Certain aspects of the gallery space were translated into the castle- like model: the roll-up doors of the loading bay became drawbridges and the mezzanine of the office overlooking the gallery space was treated with crenellations.

A ‘dungeon crawl’ is a particular type of Dungeons and Dragons game. The object of this game is for the players to wander through an imaginary architecture to collect as much loot as possible, killing whatever monsters guard this treasure. As with video games, the encounters for the players are somewhat scripted—the battles get progressively harder, leading to a final clash with the ‘big boss.’ I found it interesting that the architecture of the gallery space mirrored that of an RPG or video game—a visitor would first pass through the exhibition space, perhaps take a detour into the storage or preparation area, then climb upstairs to the office area and finally end up in the office of the gallerist herself.

Sad Wolf 2006
custom-made HD video projector, HD video
projector size: 4 × 2 × 4 ft

Sad Wolf consists of a DIY high-definition digital projector built following plans posted on the Internet then used to play a video of a wolf in a zoo. The video camera follows the wolf, one of the lowest in its hierarchy, as it tries to hang out with the rest of the pack in the enclosure.

The installation was built for my first solo show with a gallerist. I was interested in drawing parallels between the zoo exhibit, the homemade projector and the circumstances of exhibiting art commercially. In each case, there is a kind of mimesis. The wolf enclosure mimics the wild situation of the pack, yet we still see ‘real’ wolf behavior. The projector actually projects digital video, yet it too is a copy, both from an Internet plan and of a real commercial projector. An exhibition in a commercial gallery is a real representation of an artist’s practice, but the context also influences this practice.

Tree Paintings 2006–ongoing
acrylic on plaster, video/photo documentation

Since 2006 I have made a number of photographs and one video of paintings made on trees or stumps. In each case I make a plaster surface and then paint what appears on the other side of the tree. I then take a photograph or video of the painting in its surroundings, using a mirror or other reflective surface to bounce sunlight onto the painting’s surface.