mixed media. Courtesy of the artist.
COLLAGE ON VIEW
Dion Smith-Dokkie: it hides in the light
at The Bows in Calgary, Alberta, Canada
5 April-22 June 2024
“it hides in the light” presents a new body of experimental mixed-media works by artist Dion Smith-Dokkie that attend to embodiment, interface, information and infrastructure.
Inkjet-printed stills taken from video works, satellite images of bodies of water, images of daily life and select found images, are broken down into “particles”. Using water, the particles are transferred onto paper, creating a collage. In this process, the images are liquefied and lose their discernibility: they synthesize and coalesce. The resulting compositions are further developed with watercolour, gouache, and ink.
The result is indistinct, luminous work that straddles the line between nonrepresentation and concrete location, videographic and painterly modes. The formal and conceptual tools utilized—mediation and translation via contact, transfer, diffusion and mutation—become tactics of deliberately sensual and nebulously erotic self-representation. They extrapolate a diffused and empathic praxis of embodiment, self-location and co-relation.
Dion Smith-Dokkie (he, they) resides uninvited on Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh homelands and territories. He was born in Fort St. John, British Columbia, and grew up in the Peace River region of northeast British Columbia and northwest Alberta. Dion locates themselves as a gay, mixed-race European-Indigenous man who lives with mental illness. He is a member of West Moberly First Nations, a Treaty 8 First Nation. They hold a BA in Women’s Studies from the University of Victoria (2015), a BFA in Painting and Drawing from Concordia University (2019), and an MFA in Visual Arts from the University of British Columbia (2021).
(text adapted from material provided by the artist)
INFORMATION
The Bows
2001B 10th Avenue SW
Calgary, Alberta T3C 0K4, Canada
(825) 994-3366
Hours:
Thursday-Saturday, Noon-6PM