***Please scroll down for documentation***
March 2 – April 30, 2024
Opening Reception Saturday March 2, 7–9PM
2954 West 4th Ave, Vancouver, BC
Curated by Felix Rapp
Gravity wins, Entropy rules features holographic sculptural assemblages by Al Razutis. Curated by Felix Rapp, this exhibition presents a rare and critical opportunity for the public to encounter holographic art—a distinctly West Coast artistic discipline.
Born in 1946, Al Razutis is an artist and educator who has spent fifty years dedicated to innovations in media such as early experimental film, broadcasting, holography and virtual reality. Between 1972 and 1977 Razutis leased a two-building site underneath the Granville St. Bridge where he established the first holographic art studio in Canada. Combining various found materials such as furniture, newspaper clippings, children’s toys and stray electrical bits together with dichromate and silver gelatin holograms, the little-known assemblages on display are peculiar and exciting works which blur the binary between the physical space of objects and the virtual space of images. The combination of passé second-hand objects against the strange futurism of the images reflects the tension inherent to the history of holography: a strikingly innovative, nearly magical, medium which despite its promise as the future of imaging, is today relegated to obscurity.
A DIY, limited-edition publication featuring written works by Sidney Gordon, Catharine MacTavish, Felix Rapp and Al Razutis will launch alongside the opening of the exhibition.
Screenings of Razutis’ experimental films are to be announced for April, organized by Sidney Gordon, and showing in UNIT/PITT’s garden film screening area.
°°°
Al Razutis is a multimedia artist, educator and innovator in motion picture film and video, holographic art and technologies, stereoscopic 3D video art, and web-digital graphics for websites and interactive 3D virtual reality. He is a writer of critical essays, a book, and historian-preservationist of West Coast holographic art history. Educated in physics and chemistry, he has brought a combination of technological interests to his multimedia arts which have spanned over five decades. His works in avant-garde films continue to be exhibited internationally. He continues to write on historical-critical-biographical media subjects with new publications and interviews added to previous bodies of work. “This is far from over” he is fond of saying.
This exhibition is part of Capture Photography Festival’s featured exhibitions program.
Exhibition documentation by Felix Rapp.
