Vid Ingelevics | Platforms

Exhibition Dates: February 18 – March 25, 2006           

Opening reception for the artist: Saturday, February 18, 2-5 PM

We are pleased to present our second solo exhibition of work by Vid Ingelevics. Entitled Platforms, it features photographs based upon an earlier project exhibited in 2004 during the Contact Toronto Photography Festival. In its earlier guise, the work appeared as the installation of a set of large-scale photographs of Ontario deer-hunting platforms in the Museum subway station. Effecting "station domination" (as it is called in the advertising sales world), the photographs occupied all of the frames usually reserved for advertisements in the station. In that installation, close perusal of the images was impossible without risking death from electrocution.

The current incarnation of this exhibition presents several photographs of hunting platforms in conjunction with photographs of the Museum subway station itself. The hunting platforms exist as a form of rural, vernacular architecture often mistaken by city dwellers for children's treehouses; the subway station platform is a vernacular artifact of the city itself. Significantly, this station is slated to be remodeled in the near future as part of a plan to have certain stations reference the cultural institutions that they happen to serve. The station’s austere modernist design will undoubtedly give way to a far more theatrical enactment of a committee's idea of what the Royal Ontario Museum represents.

A commonality found between these two kinds of platforms lies in a particular aspect of their social usage - the shared (in)activity of waiting. One form is carried out in rural Ontario (the Beaver Valley) and the other in what might be seen as the epitome of urban space - an underground subway platform. Also present is the allusion to a barely acknowledged history of hunting at the Royal Ontario Museum as, over the years, expeditions were sent out to gather "specimens". Finally, the exhibition generates questions around the status of the photographic document as art with the final image in the show that takes as its subject the 2004 Museum subway installation itself.

Vid Ingelevics is an artist, curator and educator based in Toronto. He has exhibited his art and curated exhibitions across Canada and in the U.S. and Europe at both private galleries and public institutions. He has written numerous articles and reviews that have been published in various periodicals. He is the recipient of various awards, including grants from the Canada Council, the Ontario Arts Council, and the Toronto Arts Council. His photographs can be found in private and public collections, including the Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography, Ottawa; The City of Toronto Archives; the Museet for Fotokunst, Odense, Denmark and the Kunstmuseum Thun in Switzerland.. He is currently completing his Masters of Fine Art at York University, Toronto.