Bill Vazan

Bill Vazan (born 1933) is a Canadian artist, known for land art, sculpture, painting and photography. His work has been exhibited in North America and internationally.

Career

Born in Toronto, Ontario, Vazan studied Fine Arts at the Ontario College of Art in Toronto, and at the École des beaux-arts in Paris. In 1970 he graduated with a B.A. from Sir George Williams University, now Concordia University, in Montreal, Quebec. He currently lives and works in Montreal. Since 1982 he has taught at the Université du Québec à Montréal.

Bill Vazan has described himself as "someone who is by nature neurotic, compulsive and obsessive"."Walking Into the Vanishing Point: Conceptual Works of Bill Vazan"
Vox. Retrieved 3 March 2009. Starting in the late 1960s, he has made journeys in Montreal and Toronto, and later across Canada and around the world, documenting the journeys in sequences of photographs, maps and notes. The pictures are constrained by a self-imposed protocol such as recording every bus stop or street intersection from exactly the same spatial direction without regard to lighting or composition. The work consists of the line of photographs in the itinerary rather than the individual images. In his projects Canada Line (1969–1970), Worldline (1969–1971) and Intercommunication Lines (1968/2002), Vazan used lines of black tape on the ground to virtually link the locations, symbolically eliminating distance and time.

Bill Vazan's conceptual and minimalist land art projects of the 1960s and 1970s were often ephemeral, created by chalk lines, arrangements of stones and so on, and now only surviving through photographs, books and videos. He created "Canada in Parentheses" in collaboration with Ian Wallace in August 1969. Working simultaneously, each artist created a crescent-shaped form: Wallace on the west coast and Vazan on the east coast. Vazan created other controversial land art projects on the Plains of Abraham in Quebec City (1979), on the Nazca plains in Peru (1984–86), in Utah and Nevada (1993), in Gotland, Sweden (1997) and in the mountains of Thebes in Egypt (2001). In some of these works, Vazan created quasi-mythical sculptures, including rock engravings that resemble Aztec, Mayan or Celtic art.

Bill Vazan considers that nature and humanity are profoundly linked. His work investigates the human-cosmos relationship. In these works, what is important is not what is seen but what is unseen and unknown - the "cosmological shadows".

Vazan's work can be found in multiple institutions, such as the Musée de Lachine and the National Gallery of Canada. He was made a member of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts. In 2016, he received the Governor General's Award in Visual and Media Arts. Vazan`s archives are located at the Canadian Centre for Architecture.

Story Rock - Bill Vazan - 03.JPG,
Black Nest.jpg,
Mirages, Bill Vazan 03.jpg,
Vortexit II - Bill Vazan - 16.JPG,

Solo exhibitions

Bill Vazan has exhibited in numerous group exhibitions, and in the following solo exhibitions:
*2005 ''Cosmological Shadows'' Musée régional de la Côte Nord, Sept-Îles, Quebec
*2004 ''Cosmological Shadows'' Nickle Arts Museum, University of Calgary, Calgary
*2004 ''Cosmological Shadows'' Centre d'exposition de l'Université de Montréal, Montreal
*2003 ''Cosmological Shadows'' Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography, Ottawa
*2002 ''Surface'' Centre des arts contemporains du Québec à Montréal, Montreal
*2002 ''Soundings From The Water Planet, (selection)'' Deleon White Gallery, Toronto, Ontario.
*2002 ''Soundings From The Water Planet. Surface'' CACQM, Montreal, Quebec.
*2001 ''Cosmological Shadows'' Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec (Expo. Itinérante)
*1999 ''Jumpgates 2000'' Art Gallery of Peterborough, Ontario.
*1997 ''Complicité: Cambodge, 1997'' Espace 502, Montreal, Quebec.
*1994 ''Regard sur l'œuvre photographique 1981-1994; De l'autre coté du miroir'' Musée d'art de Joliette. Joliette, Quebec.
*1994 ''Sculpture, Paintings and Photos'' Galerie Dresdnere, Toronto, Ontario.
*1993 ''Photowrite'' Kibbutz Art Gallery, Tel-Aviv, Israel.
*1992 ''A Cosmic Dance'' Agnes Etherington Art Centre, Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario.
*1989 ''Unfolding & Heaping, 49th Parallel'' Canadian Contemporary Art Centre, New York City, USA.
*1989 ''Recent Works'' Eye-Level Gallery, Halifax, Nova Scotia.
*1989 ''Mind Frames'' White Water Gallery, North Bay Firefields, North Bay, Ontario.
*1989 ''Mind Frames'' Struts Gallery, Sackville, New Brunswick
*1981 ''Mind Frames - Recent Land and Photoworks'' Winnipeg Art Gallery; Manitoba.
*1981 ''Mind Frames'' Norman Mackenzie Art Gallery, Regina, Saskatchewan.
*1981 ''Mind Frames'' Art Gallery of Windsor, Ontario.
*1980 ''Suites photographiques récentes et œuvres sur le terrain'' Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal, Montreal, Quebec. (exposition itinérante)
*1979 ''œuvres et documentation photographique'' La chambre blanche,La Chambre Blanche website
Retrieved 4 March 2009. Quebec City, Quebec.
*1977 ''Visual Spheres: Photo Scannings'' Galerie Gilles Gheerbrant, Montreal, Quebec.
*1977 ''œuvres planétaires'' Galerie Shandar, Paris, France.
*1976 ''Paris Scannings'' International Cultural Centre, Antwerp, Belgium
*1975 ''Obras recientes'' Centro de arte y comunicacion, Buenos Aires
*1975 ''Obras recientes'' Gilles Gheerbrant, Montreal, Quebec.
*1975 ''Trajectoires solaires'' Galerie d'art de l'Université de Sherbrooke, Quebec.
*1974 ''Contacts'' Musée d'art contemporain, Montréal, Quebec.
*1974 ''Champs de Force'' Mezzanine Gallery, Nova Scotia College of Art, Halifax.
*1970 ''Maps & Movings' A Space, Toronto, Ontario.
*1969 ''Taped Sculpture Court'' Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, Ontario.
*1968 ''1 + 2 + 3'' Galerie Libre, Montreal, Quebec.

Bibliography

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*1974. ''Conceptual Art: Transformation of Natural and of Cultural Environments'' W Vazan, P Heyer (Leonardo)

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Vazan, Bill
1933 births
Artists from Toronto
Canadian photographers
20th-century Canadian painters
Canadian male painters
21st-century Canadian painters
Canadian sculptors
Canadian male sculptors
Land artists
Living people
Université du Québec à Montréal faculty
Canadian alumni of the École des Beaux-Arts
Members of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts
20th-century sculptors
Canadian conceptual artists
Governor General's Award in Visual and Media Arts winners
20th-century Canadian male artists
21st-century Canadian male artists