Supporting
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Past

Two Days at the Falls

Isabell Spengler

April 7 – May 16
Opening Reception: Friday April 10, 4 – 7PM

Two Days at the Falls
Image: Isabell Spengler, video still from Two Days at the Falls installation, 2015

For over a century, Niagara Falls has been a popular tourist destination and subject for artists and amateurs alike. Whether as a backdrop for romantic encounters, or a site of daring and sometimes tragedy, the hypnotic pull and imposing grandeur of the falls have been documented on every available medium and thus found their way into the popular imagination.

In Berlin-based Isabell Spengler’s installation we are presented with two panoramic depictions of the iconic Niagara Falls—one that was created onsite and the other, a three-dimensional model, constructed in her Berlin studio having never visited the Falls. This second model is not a geographically accurate replica but rather an embodiment of the artist’s preconceived notions of the place—a distillation of ideas, images and dreams. Alongside these fictional falls, we are also confronted with the same 360-degree pan of the actual cataract and surrounding landscape, shot on location during her two-month residency in Toronto. The adjacent screens play with concepts of anticipation, imagination, time and place.

Created specially for the Images Festival and Trinity Square Video as part of the European Media Artists in Residence Exchange (EMARE), Isabell Spengler’s Two Days at the Falls explores the intersection between the real and the imagined, popular culture and private perception, the monumental and the ordinary.

Presented by the Images Festival, the Goethe-Institut and Trinity Square Video in the framework of the European Media Artists in Residence Exchange.

Move On – New Media Art from Australia, Canada and Europe / EMARE Australia Canada is funded by the European Commission Culture Programme 2013 and the Goethe-Institut.