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ROBERT HENGEVELD
  • Title
    • 85:100
    • Common Ground
    • Dead or Alive
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    • HOWL (Art Gallery of Guelph)
    • HOWL (Nuit Blanche)
    • HOWL, MacDonald Stewart Art Centre
    • in pursuit of paradise
    • Into the Wild
    • it only ever really happens every once in a while
    • It only ever really happens every once in a while
    • Itten-Judd Studies
    • Kentucky Perfect
    • Miss November
    • Natural Revision
    • Pickled Tense
    • Promised Lands: Abridged and Appended
    • Residue
    • Rotating Tree
    • Speaking of Rock
    • SSSpun
    • Staging the Gap
    • Still Looking For More
    • Stock Extravaganza
    • Synthetic Humph
    • Taking it to the Moon
    • The Way Life Should Be
    • Totally Square
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    • TTTourner
    • Uprising
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The Way Life Should Be

An immersive installation comprised of an Algonquinesque composition of synthetic rocks, trees, grass, and wildlife decoys is confronted with dislocated nature sounds of crashing waves and sea birds that resonate throughout the fabricated environment. The entire synthetic wilderness exists four feet off the floor, resting on a raised platform. The doorway to the room is abruptly bisected by two disparate worlds: the manufactured landscape above and the contrasting reality below. Ducking beneath the scaffolding and to the right of the door a ladder is found which provides access to this artificial oasis which falls marginally short of utopic. Nearby, a decoy deer emerges from behind some shrubbery, occasionally interrupting the oceanic overtones with an unexpected guttural moan – a moan that is difficult to distinguish between pain or ecstasy.

The curious montage of synthetic nature creates an odd environment of dislocated natural references, exploring the limits of our capacity to suspend disbelief. It is a project that exists within a culture in which the synthetic or the stand-in has become increasingly commonplace, and where any notion of an authentic reality is at best questionable. The overstatement and absurdity of this peculiar installation sets a playing field in which our existing relationship to both the synthetic and the natural can be explored; Its fiction reflecting on the reality (or recreated reality) of the world we live in.

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ROBERT HENGEVELD
 
 

Recent Posts

  • Presentation at Universities Arts Association of Canada, Banff Centre for the Arts
  • Artist Talk: Gladstone Hotel, May 15 2017
  • Presenting a talk for the MacLaren Art Centre’s ‘Art for Lunch’ series.
  • Miss November installed at MacLaren Art Centre, Barrie ON
  • Review of the project Passages Insolites, Quebec City