Robert Hengeveld: where phantoms meet

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Robert Hengeveld, "where phantoms meet," 2017

installation view

Join us at the Alternator Centre for Contemporary Art on Friday, July 7, 2017, 5-7 P.M. for the opening of Toronto-based artist Robert Hengeveld’s where phantoms meet and the offsite installation still looking, hosted at Kettle River Brewery from 7-8 P.M.

where phantoms meet, exhibited at the Alternator, consists of two sizeable and meticulously life-like boulders that are executing a slow and silent exchange within the gallery space, and take turns responding to one another’s actions.

still looking, exhibited at Kettle River Brewery includes an existing chandelier in the brewery’s tasting room that receives text messages and translates them into Morse Code.

Both works follow a sustained and evolving exploration within Hengeveld’s practice that focuses on the intricate and increasingly disconnected relationship we have to the natural world, often taking shape through the manipulation of the familiar environments or common experiences, and in the creation of synthetic environments which both mimic and mock the natural environment which it references. His works hover somewhere between reality and artifice, fact and fiction. Through a shift in scale, material, context, giving sound to the silent object, or through the animation of the ordinarily inert, the work takes aspects of the everyday and gives them a subtle kick into the unfamiliar.

Robert Hengeveld is an installation and media artist whose work explores the boundaries between reality and fiction, and where we find ourselves within that relationship. He completed a MFA at the University of Victoria. His work has been exhibited across Canada and internationally and is held in various public and private collections. His work has received various grants and fellowships including the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council, Toronto Art Council and a recent nomination for the Premier’s Award. Past exhibitions include Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center (Buffalo US), Art Gallery of Guelph (Guelph CA), Art Athina (Athens, GC), ExMuro (Quebec, QC), Mercer Union ( Toronto, ON ), Mulherin New York (NYC, US), and Opinion Makers (London UK). He recently returned from an expedition to the Arctic through The Arctic Circle Expedition along with other international artists and scientists.Robert Hengeveld is represented by Mulherin Toronto + New York.