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Artist Statement Over the past 50 years, I have been producing and exhibiting (nationally internationally) art that focuses on critiques: Art, Media Information systems, Corporate, Consumer Popular Culture, The Rural vs. the Urban, Technology vs Humans Nature, Global Ecological Sustainability Concerns, the Landscape in the broadest of ways, as well as Visual Perception in general. A survey of my art production includes; sculpture, photography, painting, video/film, drawing, performance, mixed media installation. An early source of inspiration for me was the ideas theories of influential media theorist Marshall McLuhan, which I feel have been incorporated into much of my art, which profoundly affects our way of looking at the modern world. We live in a natural landscape a landscape of information, it is the fusion vs. the confusion between these landscapes that excites me informs my practice. This fusion is explored in the work titled Television Works 1999-2006. This work is made up of 10 television sets tuned to 'snow'. Imposed on these 'snowy' screens are acrylic painted landscapes. The work discusses a societal fascination with the rapidity pervasiveness of technology its relation to our natural social landscapes.In the past, this work has been exhibited across Canada, America, as well as in the UK in London, & it is now in the collection of the Art Gallery of Ontario. For the Xi'an exhibition I will be producing a new landscape series of Television Works 2014. Another early source of inspiration for me has been the Eastern philosophy of ZEN, which I studied in 1961-62 in Japan while I was on a Japanese Government Foreign Scholarship, it has been important to my life art. It teaches the importance of living in the moment, of caring for the environment, and the interconnectedness of all living things, of being aware of your own the world's present state. Informing the work One Canada Video (1992) (IAIN BAXTER in collaboration with Louise Chance Baxter&) was the TransCanada highway acting as a highway lifeline a measurement (every mile videotaped) of our Canadian contemporary landscape. The work was accomplished by affixing a tripod in our van which enabled us to video through the windshield of our vehicle while we traveled for two weeks across Canada. The work was produced during the Charlottetown Accord its public referendum in Canada, a conference to ensure that there was One Canada. Throughout our travels, from Cape Spear, Newfoundland to Long Beach, Vancouver Island BC we engaged in discussions with people along the way concerning the referendum collected ideas & thoughts. Coming from the small island of Trinidad, in the Caribbean the grandeur of the vast Canadian landscape was of particular interest to my wife, Louise Chance Baxter&, the exploration of that interest was integral to the creation of the work. One Canada Video measures the North American continent through the perspective of the windshield asks the observer to view the 100 hour video projection from inside the vehicle, the way, many of us, everyday view and experience the Canadian landscape. This work has been exhibited in Paris, Nice Geneva while working with french curator critic Christophe Domino. IAIN BAZTER&, O.C., O.ont., O.B.C., FRSC, RCA, MFA, D.Litt. |