CORWYN LUND
WORD COUNT
Exhibition
Koffler Gallery Off-Site Presented at Epic Condominium Development 48 Abell Street, 2013
Photo documentation by Nick Kozak
Often integrated into civic spaces, the artworks of Toronto artist Corwyn Lund create dynamic relationships between the body and the built environment. Word Count, Lund’s site-specific project for the Koffler Gallery Off-Site, attempted to memorialize a fleeting moment within Toronto’s unrelenting urban redevelopment.
Word Count takes the form of a written proposal, for an unrealized and unrealizable video, that is installed on the hoarding surrounding the Epic Condominium construction site at the core of the West Queen West Triangle. Lund’s installation takes a queue from urban development proposals that must be prominently displayed on site, but follows the format and length set out by Canadian art councils for media arts grant applications. In so doing, the project wittily connects the equally bureaucratic sides of artistic and architectural production.
The large-scale text piece mounted on the hoarding describes a proposed video documenting a lone ice-skater gliding across a frozen pond momentarily created by rain and freezing conditions within the excavation pit where the 48 Abell building once stood. Demolished in winter 2012, this former three-story warehouse had served for decades as studios and unsanctioned affordable housing for artists, its redevelopment marking a new era in live/work spaces for Toronto artists.
The ice rink at the heart of Lund’s proposal, which materialized as pristine skating surface only for one weekend, was impossible to record on video as the artist planned, due to its ephemeral nature. Reflecting on its relevance in hindsight, the construction-site-as-ice-rink, encircled by newly built condominiums in the heart of Canada’s largest city, offered an unexpected poetic reprieve in the course of urban history. The video would have poignantly positioned the unplanned rink as the threshold between the old and new – the open grave of the 48 Abell building and the birthplace of the new construction.
As the video of the 48 Abell Street Ice Rink could not be realized, Lund resorts to an alternative strategy for sharing this poetic moment. Avoiding the static inadequacy of photographs or drawings, he chooses to translate his vision into words – a process familiar to professional Canadian artists seeking grant funding to realize their ideas in visual or physical form. The durational unfolding of the text being read across the hoarding’s extensive length re-invests the written translation of the video with temporality and site-specificity. Wrapped around the site, the installation serves to remember a passing moment in Toronto history, as fleeting as melting ice.
View the complete text online here.
The ice rink at the heart of Lund’s proposal, which materialized as pristine skating surface only for one weekend, was impossible to record on video as the artist planned, due to its ephemeral nature. Reflecting on its relevance in hindsight, the construction-site-as-ice-rink, encircled by newly built condominiums in the heart of Canada’s largest city, offered an unexpected poetic reprieve in the course of urban history. The video would have poignantly positioned the unplanned rink as the threshold between the old and new – the open grave of the 48 Abell building and the birthplace of the new construction.
As the video of the 48 Abell Street Ice Rink could not be realized, Lund resorts to an alternative strategy for sharing this poetic moment. Avoiding the static inadequacy of photographs or drawings, he chooses to translate his vision into words – a process familiar to professional Canadian artists seeking grant funding to realize their ideas in visual or physical form. The durational unfolding of the text being read across the hoarding’s extensive length re-invests the written translation of the video with temporality and site-specificity. Wrapped around the site, the installation serves to remember a passing moment in Toronto history, as fleeting as melting ice.
View the complete text online here.
Artist Info
Corwyn Lund explores the intersection of sculpture and place, meaning and site. His formative public art projects, strategically integrated into civic spaces, invited direct physical engagement. Subsequent gallery-based installations have continued to explore the relationship between the viewer, sculptural form, and context. Since training in art, design and architecture, Lund has participated in artist residencies in Banff and the Netherlands. He has shown nationally and internationally, including exhibitions and video screenings in the US, Cuba, and Germany. His work is included in private, public and corporate collections. Lund is represented by Diaz Contemporary in Toronto.
