CCS BARD

Toronto-based multidisciplinary artist Christof Migone revisits past works in a new context. Fixation is simultaneously the fixed point of an object set in time and space and the motivation behind a trajectory of thought from one idea to another. The video, audio, sculptural and text works in this exhibition explore in part obsession, the body, and the mundane rooted in the everyday. The everyday in art is not so because it has touched on a subject that is regularly mediated in our day to day. It is more precisely art that has taken a very pointed consideration of the occurrences of life, which happen on such a small scale as to not even attract attention. Things like sweating, salivating, identical words that exist in multiple books in our library, sticking out a tongue, telling our age out loud, and so on and so forth. Why bring awareness to the small gestures of our everyday? This can be seen as non-art, not only turning away from the aesthetics of art objects, but to “indicate”, “intervene”, “document” what is closest to the artist, in hopes of understanding the most basic foundations of the world around us.

THE ARTIST

Christof Migone is a multidisciplinary artist and writer. His work and research delves into language, voice, bodies, performance, intimacy, complicity, endurance. He co-edited the book and CD Writing Aloud: The Sonics of Language (Los Angeles: Errant Bodies Press, 2001) and his writings have been published in Aural Cultures, S:ON, Experimental Sound & Radio, Musicworks, Radio Rethink, Semiotext(e), Angelaki, Esse, Inter, etc. He obtained an MFA from NSCAD in 1996 and a PhD from the Department of Performance Studies at the Tisch School of the Arts of New York University in 2007. He has released six solo audio cds on various labels (Avatar, ND, Alien 8, Locust, Oral). He has curated a number of events: Touch that Dial (1990), Radio Contortions (1991), Rappel (1994), Double Site (1998), stuttermouthface (2002), Disquiet (2005), START (2007) and STOP. (2008). He has performed at Beyond Music Sound Festival (Los Angeles), kaaistudios (Brussels), Resonance FM (London), Nouvelles Scènes (Dijon), On the Air (Innsbruck), Ménagerie de Verre (Paris), Experimental Intermedia (NYC),  Méduse (Québec), Victoriaville Festival, and in Montreal at Radio Canada, Quinzaine de la Voix, Musiques Fragiles, Galerie Oboro, Casa del Popolo, Théâtre La Chapelle, etc. His installations have been exhibited at the Banff Center, Rotterdam Film Festival, Gallery 101, Art Lab, eyelevelgallery, Forest City Gallery, Studio 5 Beekman. He has collaborated with Lynda Gaudreau, Martin Tétreault, Tammy Forsythe, Alexandre St-Onge, Michel F. Côté, Gregory Whitehead, Set Fire To Flames, and Fly Pan Am. A monograph on his work, Christof Migone - Sound Voice Perform, was published in 2005. In 2006, the Galerie de l’UQAM presented a retrospective on his work accompanied by a catalog and a DVD entitled Christof Migone - Trou. He currently lives in Toronto and is a lecturer at the University of Toronto Mississauga and the Director/Curator of the Blackwood Gallery.www.christofmigone.com

Fixation is curated by Mireille Bourgeois as part of the requirements for the master of arts degree in curatorial studies.

Student curated exhibitions at CCS Bard are made possible with support from the Rebecca and Martin Eisenberg Student Exhibition Fund; Mitzi and Warren Eisenberg; and the Patrons, Supporters, and Friends of the Center for Curatorial Studies. Special thanks to the Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation.

Exhibition brochure: PDF