FILMTRACK 4 A SOUND: SUITE KURELEK DE FIALA
by Adrian Göllner 

We tend to accept a photograph as a fair representation of reality. Even in an age when image manipulation is so pervasive, familiar elements within a photograph reassure us that the image is indeed genuine, at least at its core. Further, we rarely question these mechanics of the photographic process and its role in determining the appearance of that reality. Photo-based artist Andrew Wright knows this. In fact, he knows how quickly our brains work to categorize a photograph as a landscape, portrait or still life, and once that operation is complete, move on. Wright pulls the thread on our mental complacency by discreetly re-introducing elements of the photographic process into his artworks. What we understand as being self-evident in a photograph is slyly and irrevocably undercut by new knowledge that reveals all as smoke and mirrors, lenscraft, and light. The results are photo-based artworks that we enjoy for their visual content but which we are compelled to question.

Wright brings this visual dynamic to his video and sound installation Filmtrack 4 A Sound: Suite Kurelek de Fiala (2010-2020) with surprising results. The Karsh Award celebrates the career of an Ottawa photo-based artist and provides an exhibition through which the laureate might profile their oeuvre. Wright viewed the award as an opportunity to challenge conventional photographic exhibition strategies creating a project so Canadian, so technology-driven, and particularly conceptual that it might only have be possible given this venue. Indeed, as if responding to the Canadian artists for whom the gallery is named, Yousuf Karsh and Henri Masson, a photographer and a painter reknown for his winter landscapes, respectively, Wright’s installation draws a relationship between two genres in a manner that never quite settles and which has the viewer working to keep their bearings.

Filmtrack 4 A Sound: Suite Kurelek de Fiala (2010-2020) is inspired by a pristine, unopened box set of records from the 1980s that Wright found in 2009. A perfectly preserved artefact of a more idealistic time, Canadian Anthology (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation 1987) is carefully unboxed, played and recorded a single time, and then resealed. Within the anthology is George Fiala’s (1922-2017) Kurelek Suite (1982), an orchestral piece in which each of the five movements is composed in response to a particular painting by William Kurelek (1927-1977). Taking Fiala’s homage one step further, Wright makes a filmic chronicling of the unboxing event, which is then screened as three contiguous fields on the gallery walls. The result is a visual journey across vast arctic landscapes of snow and ice -- or so it would appear. Wright’s exacting examination of the box set was accomplished using specialized macro lens and precision focusing equipment. With varying degrees of speed, and at times excruciatingly slow, the lens moves over the surface of the box, the vinyl records and their sleeves, to reveal landscapes within. It is as if in that brief moment in which the record set was open, Wright rediscovered a vision of the country that no longer exists but was somehow embedded in the very fibre of the CBC anthology.

As the modern and melancholy score of the Kurelek Suite (1982) is heard, the video sequences change. Drawn randomly from three digital video banks, the cinematic combination we see projected is never repeated. Again, we are reminded that what we are witnessing is fleeting, rare and difficult to ‘pin down’ perceptually.     

Wright, as he does, breaks the illusion, or at least provides us with the clues to disassemble what we are seeing. As our minds cleave to understand the three projections as landscapes, elements of graphic design from the cover of the box set appear in the videos and bring us back to the object. That object has been carefully placed in a Plexiglass-covered plinth in the middle of the gallery to ensure we do indeed recognize the source of the sound and videos about us. However, given the illusory nature of the images we are observing, that impossibly Canadian set of records gains an almost magical quality within the space.

Filmtrack 4 A Sound: Suite Kurelek de Fiala (2010-2020) belies Wright’s fascination with Canada’s landscapes but also his profound ambivalence with ideas of nationhood. His interest in Fiala’s and Kurelek’s art and their tributes to Canada is sincere, and this is clearly evident in the extended time, care, and precision with which he has pursued this project. However, as mentioned at the outset, Wright always provides the means by which the images he presents can be challenged. Within this sound and video installation we catch glimpses of an older vision of Canada, one as ‘pure as the driven snow’ and worthy of classical orchestration. But as we spend time with the work we realize that while this vision of Canada wrested from a box of CBC records is beautiful, it is perhaps long past its time and, ultimately, an illusion.   The idealism of the 1970s and 80s is set against our increased awareness of profound environmental degradation, the pitfalls of a resource-based economy, and the recognition that these utopian visions excluded Indigenous peoples.

As seductive as that older vision of Canada is, and while it might evoke feelings of nostalgia, Wright has, in a final turn, put it back in its box.

Adrian Göllner is an Ottawa-based artist who divides his time between creating small, conceptual works in his studio and implementing public art commissions at a much larger scale. He received a BFA from Queen’s University in 1987 and an MFA at the University of Ottawa in 2016. While continuing to exhibit at home and abroad, Göllner continues to advocate for artists’ rights.

Wright and Göllner are frequent artistic collaborators and can be found debating the finer points of art over pho in Chinatown. Göllner is pleased to have nominated his friend Andrew Wright for the 2019 Karsh Award.