Visual artist Shimon Attie to present 2015 Goldfarb Lecture in Visual Arts

Shimon Attie, a renowned visual artist based in New York City, is the featured speaker for the 2015 Goldfarb Lecture in Visual Arts on March 12, from 4 to 5:30pm, at the Jackman Hall, Art Gallery of Ontario, 317 Dundas St. West, Toronto.

Issues of loss, communal trauma and the potential for regeneration are central to Attie’s creative practice. He uses a wide variety of media to reimagine new relationships between space, time, place and identity, and often engages local communities in the creation of his works.

Above: Slide projection of former Hebrew bookstore, 1930, Berlin (1992). On-location installation and 33 by 40 inches chromogenic photograph by Shimon Attie. Image courtesy of Jack Shainman Gallery, New York
Slide projection of former Hebrew bookstore, 1930, Berlin (1992). On-location installation and 33- by 40-inch chromogenic photograph by Shimon Attie. Image courtesy of Jack Shainman Gallery, New York

In this public talk, titled “Sites Unseen,” Attie will discuss some of his signature art projects, including early site-specific installations in Europe and the U.S. as well as more recent works that involve multiple-channel immersive video installations. He will also present images from his most recent project, Facts on the Ground, a series of installations that he created in locations across Israel and Palestine.

Attie will touch upon themes related to ephemeral versus material images, how these relate to the process of remembering and forgetting, and broader parameters of what constitutes site, context, culture and politics.

Above: Image-Installation shot: Nine two metre by two metre light boxes mounted with “dura-trans” photographs submerged one metre underwater, Borsgraven Canal, Copenhagen, Denmark. On light box in foreground: Present day Yugoslavian refugee with Danish entry stamp on passport by Shimon Attie. Image courtesy of Jack Shainman Gallery, New York
Nine two-metre by two-metre light boxes mounted with “dura-trans” photographs submerged one metre underwater in the Borsgraven Canal, Copenhagen, Denmark. On light box in foreground: Present-day Yugoslavian refugee with Danish entry stamp on passport by Shimon Attie. Image courtesy of Jack Shainman Gallery, New York

His work has been exhibited in museums and galleries around the world, including: the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; and the Miami Art Museum.

A mid-career retrospective was organized by Boston’s Institute of Contemporary Art and films on his work have aired on PBS, the BBC and ARD. He was awarded the Lee Krasner Lifetime Achievement Award in Art in 2013.

The Goldfarb Lecture in Visual Arts is made possible through the generous support of Joan and Martin Goldfarb, longstanding benefactors of the Department of Visual Art & Art History and the School of the Arts, Media, Performance & Design at York University.

Admission is free and this lecture is open to the public.