Immersive and intimate, this debut installation by Don McKellar places his much-praised recent experiments with new moving-image media into a uniquely sophisticated and poignant context.
In the last few years, McKellar has been sent all over the globe to promote his work. The pathos and loneliness inherent in these celebrity road trips prompted him to devise a serialized conceptual work using his main connection back home: a cellphone. In each segment, a different woman in a different foreign locale creates a heartfelt personal video-phone message for an unnamed and deeply missed lover. Set in private interior spaces, the recordings also present a view outward to each city, situating the women's refuge against exterior public spaces and distinctive tourist sites.
McKellar uses the medium's tactile low-res quality and scratchy sound to evoke a mood of authenticity and almost embarrassed privacy. Yet the thoughtful viewer immediately recognizes an artist's hand; these are carefully constructed films involving soundtracks, subtitling and editing. The result is an affectionate and impressionistic meditation on technologically constructed identities, fictional personas and the types of romantic expression enabled by modern communication tools.
Although the genesis for the project was a television commission for the first two films, McKellar has since made the series a self-described obsession, shooting more segments and acquiring more imaginary lovers. In creating this installation, he turns these accrued sketches into a far richer experiential artwork. Part travelogue, part contemporary epistolary form, the installation explores issues of desire and displacement, and the complicated politics of travel and human intimacy. McKellar's lovers have been created in Rio, Sao Paulo, New Delhi, Agra, Wellington, Tokyo, Brussels, London, Kampala, Nairobi, Regina, Montreal, Madrid, Vienna and Los Angeles. As these women send out their tender messages of love and longing, sequentially and on multiple screens at the Stephen Bulger Gallery, they project their fictional identities and construct an imaginary recipient, a mysterious foreigner much desired and missed. In the process of representation, the messages are liberated from sender and recipient, allowing the viewer to become the intended, immersed in multiple global love affairs and part of a romantic yet lonely ethos.
Agata Smoluch Del Sorbo and Noah Cowan
Curated by Agata Smoluch Del Sorbo and Noah Cowan
Presented in partnership with Stephen Bulger Gallery
September 9 to 19, 2009
Stephen Bulger Gallery
1026 Queen Street West
Tuesday to Sunday, 11 am to 6 pm
FREE to the public
Don McKellar was born in Toronto. His acting credits include
Highway 61 (91), which he also wrote,
waydowntown (00),
Clean (04) and
Cooking with Stella (09), also playing in this year's Festival. He co-wrote François Girard's
Thirty Two Short Films About Glenn Gould (93) and
The Red Violin (98), and scripted Fernando Meirelles's
Blindness (08). His first feature,
Last Night (98), won the Prix de la jeunesse at the Cannes Film Festival. He won a Tony award in 2006 for co-writing the theatrical musical
The Drowsy Chaperone.