New Vancouver Art Gallery Offsite commission, The Dusk Meridian, examines the time and space between the passing from light into darkness
VANCOUVER, BC // Traditional Coast Salish Lands including the Musqueam (xʷməθkʷəy̓əm), Squamish (Sḵwx̱wú7mesh Úxwumixw) and Tsleil-Waututh (səl̓ilw̓ətaʔɬ) Nations.
The Dusk Meridian is a multimedia installation by the Vancouver– and Kelowna–based artist Keith Langergraber. Its principal features are scaled-down representations of two fire towers that are physically close but imaginatively separated: the real-life versions sit on either side of the border that divides Canada and the US at the southern boundary of E.C. Manning Provincial Park.
The title refers to the moment in time between the setting of the sun and the onset of darkness and to the geographical location of this phenomenon, which endlessly traverses the rotating surface of the planet. It is also a nod to Cormac McCarthy’s The Blood Meridian, an apocalyptic neo-biblical novel set on the border between the US and Mexico. These references are reiterated in the phantasmagoric light projected onto the fire towers, the pool of water on which they sit and the wall behind them, evoking a transitional condition somewhere between the setting of the sun and the approach of a catastrophic wildfire. But while the warmth of this light might contrast with the overcast gloom of a Vancouver winter, it offers little in the way of easy comfort.
Langergraber’s work serves as an allegory for crossing a point of no return: passing from light into darkness. Here, the devastation wrought by widespread wildfires—a force of nature unconstrained by abstractions like national borders—becomes the norm. The fire towers of The Dusk Meridian can be seen as silent witnesses to this transition, much like barometers measuring climactic change that has already arrived.
“Over the past twenty years Keith Langergraber has produced an extraordinary body of work that engages with real sites, imagined geographies and the histories that can be traced through them,” shares Grant Arnold, Audain Curator of British Columbia Art, “The Dusk Meridian is a compelling extension of his investigations into the failed promises embedded in these spaces and the implications they hold for an unpredictable and potentially ruinous future.”
Keith Langergraber studied at the University of Victoria and the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, and currently teaches at the Emily Carr University of Art + Design, Vancouver. His research-based practice draws upon disparate references that run from utopian and dystopian literature, art history and outsider sub-cultures to the narratives embedded in a particular site. His work has been exhibited widely in Canada and abroad over the past twenty years.
The Dusk Meridian features a theatrical lighting component nightly from dusk until dawn.
The Dusk Meridian is organized by the Vancouver Art Gallery on behalf of the City of Vancouver Public Art Program and curated by Grant Arnold, Audain Curator of British Columbia Art.
The exhibition opens to the public from November 20, 2021, through to May 23, 2022.
Offsite is located at 1100 West Georgia Street (between Thurlow and Bute), just west of the Shangri–La Hotel
ABOUT OFFSITE
Offsite is the Vancouver Art Gallery’s outdoor public art space located at 1100 West Georgia Street between Thurlow and Bute Streets, west of the Shangri-La Hotel, in downtown Vancouver. Presenting an innovative program of temporary projects, it is a site for local and international contemporary artists to exhibit works related to the surrounding urban context. Featured artists consider the site-specific potential of art within the public realm and respond to the changing social and cultural conditions of our contemporary world. New projects are installed in the spring and fall. Offsite: Sanaz Mazinani is the 20th Offsite installation.
Offsite is organized by the Vancouver Art Gallery on behalf of the City of Vancouver Public Art Program. The Gallery recognizes Ian Gillespie, President, Westbank; Ben Yeung, President, Peterson Investment Group; and the residents of the Shangri-La for their support of this space.
Image: Keith Langergraber, The Dusk Meridian, 2021, digital rendering by Sean Arden for site-specific installation at Vancouver Art Gallery Offsite
