Jason Baerg - "Returning"

Returning by Jason Baerg

January 17 to February 22, 2014

Opening reception on January 17 8 pm | Artist Talk at 9 pm

Urban Shaman’s Main and Marvin Francis Media Art Galleries

In partnership with Art City Youth Exhibition, Urban Shaman’s AND Gallery

Artist Statement: This dynamic, multi-media exhibition features two recent works created by Jason Baerg, a Cree Métis artist based in Toronto. The work in this exhibition includes a series of circular paintings from the Relations series, which draw on Baerg’s early training in abstraction combined with computer-generated elements. Also included is a new installation of figurative-abstract paintings, entitled Nomadic Bounce. Both works are presented alongside videos comprised of photo- and computer-based imagery, thus continuing Baerg’s commitment to new and traditional modes of art production and engagement.

Relations was developed out of a residency investigating the many prophecies that concern 2012—Mayan, Hopi, Mohawk, Tibetan. The resulting 13 circular works, or tondos, speak to notions of the passage of time and suggest a reconsideration of Indigenous frameworks of knowledge. Relations explores these cosmic themes through sculptural paintings, which embrace our relationship to each other, the Earth, the sun and beyond.

For his newest installation, Nomadic Bounce, Baerg looks at the tension of, as he says, “running to and from everything we love and hate at the same time; from place, from people, returning to the same place and same people.” The work draws upon this personal narrative to create a dynamic installation of laser-cut acrylic paintings as an intersection of the locative and the figurative. Nomadic Bounce was produced

as part of an Indigenous Exchange residency opportunity between the RMIT School of Art (Australia) and the University of Lethbridge (Canada).

Biography: Jason Baerg is a Cree Métis Contemporary Artist and Curator. He currently is on a one year RBC Aboriginal Curatorial Residency at the Judith and Norman Alix Art Gallery, in his birth place of Sarnia, Ontario. As an artist he is pushing digital interventions in drawing, painting and new media. He has presented at such international art institutions as the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology in Australia; the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico and the Denver Museum of Nature and Science in Colorado, USA. Jason Baerg has given formal artist talks at such institutions as New York City’s Parsons School of Design, the Whitecliffe College of Arts & Design in Auckland, New Zealand and at the University of Toronto.

For interviews with the artist or the Director, Daina Warren please contact info@urbanshaman.org.