This publication comprises the first monographic survey dedicated to Canadian artist Kevin Schmidt. This publication comprises the first monographic survey dedicated to artist Kevin Schmidt.
Based in Vancouver, Schmidt is an interdisciplinary artist working across performance, video, photography and installation who has exhibited widely across North America and Europe. He is
perhaps best known for performance expeditions and interventions into the natural world, which are documented in photographs, installations and videos, such as his eleven-and-a-half-hour Epic
Journey, which documents a marathon nighttime screening of the Lord of the Rings trilogy in a small boat as it drifted down the Fraser River, or his Aurora with Roman Candle, which shows him
firing roman candles at the Aurora Borealis.
At a time when we might consider cultural production as being democratised through the Internet, Schmidt combines notions of the heroic with the seemingly amateur by using visible reminders
of construction and theatrical devicessmoke machines, stage lights and DIY photographic equipment. Through this he proposes a utopian assertion of the commons”, where both land and culture
are publicly accessible to all.
Presented in partnership with Kamloops Art Gallery and Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver, this publication features essays by Charo Neville, Kathleen Ritter and an artist interview with
Nigel Prince. The book charts Schmidt’s ongoing body of work addressing the tensions between man and nature, performance and document and indoors and outdoors. These propositions are tackled
through references to landscape, the invocation of the sublime at the point of apprehending such wild beauty, and by juxtaposing seemingly disparate elements within these environments. Works
are often situated in remote locations, where Schmidt stages remarkable events that transfer elements of urban culture into untouched natural contexts. In this way, he simultaneously examines
both the seductive elements of contemporary cultural production and the constructions that surround the idea of nature.
