Drive into the Sunset

Description:

Drive into the Sunset was a collaborative group exhibition of mixed media, sculpture, and video work. Initiated and curated by Vancouver-based artist Barb Choit and Los Angeles-based artist Erica Redling, the exhibition explored the displacement of Hollywood to Vancouver as "Hollywood North" within the context of photo-conceptual and land art practices that have become a part of the art histories of both places. 

Choit and Redling used the road movie genre as their curatorial premise, and produced their own film as an homage in collaboration with Valerie Schulz. They selected Los Angeles based artists Scott Benzel, Zoe Crosher, Karl Erickson, Kopp/Kordansky, Brian O’Connell, Lisa Oppenheim, Isabell Spengler, and Shane Willis to produce works that could function as a prop, set, or backdrop in their film and were installed in situ at various points as they drove from Los Angeles to Vancouver, transporting the artworks to their final destination to be shown in Western Front’s gallery.

Each artist, by producing a piece directly for the journey or by indirectly referring to the genre and its motifs, revealed provocative trajectories based on their own ideas of the American road, the landscape of the west coast, and the interior and architectural spaces of travel.

The film Seven Works 2089.69 Miles was presented in the exhibition as both documentation of each artwork and as an extension of Choit and Redling’s curatorial inquiry. By staging the works in transit between the location of production and final presentation, it elicited thinking about the works produced as mobile, as an object that both sets a stage and builds a context for itself. 

An exhibition opening took place Jan 17, 2004.