49.279001, -122.914881 / 49.2789195, -122.9149733 / 49.2789985, -122.9148885
Works from the permanent collection of SFU
with works by Karel Appel, Carl Beam, Claude Cahun, Emily Carr, Orestes Nicholas de Grandmaison, Max Ernst, Kathe Kollwitz, Bill Reid, Frederick Horsman Varley, Reece Terris and Neil Wedman.
Patrick Cruz drew together this group of works from the SFU Art Collection using remote viewing, the paranormal practice of perceiving a remote or hidden subject without the support of the senses. After learning the geographic coordinates of the Collection’s storage vault, Cruz, who is based in Toronto, entered a meditative state and detached himself from the conscious mind to allow subconscious perceptions to surface. The sequence of characteristics that appeared to him, which Cruz then relayed to the Gibson Collections and Curatorial team, uncannily described a series of artworks held in the vault. By invoking an alternate Methodology beyond the threshold of accepted academic practice, Cruz points to the work’s energetic presence and autonomy, as well as other possible paradigms for connection and study. The artist mounted the artworks in a timber-framed structure whose proportions echo those of the SFU Art Collection vault and faced them inward, as though in conversation with one another. -Kimberly Philipps