InterAccess is pleased to present Oath of the Homunculi, a group exhibition examining the use of scale in electronic and digital media, featuring the work of Robert Hengeveld, Rafaël Rozendaal, Paul Slocum, and Soft Turns, and curated by Alex Snukal and Jennifer Cherniack.

The exhibition takes its inspiration from Nicolas Hartsoeker's drawing Homunculus (1694), an iconic representation of the pre-modern biological concept of Preformation. In its strictest sense, Preformatism held that living organisms were not created anew with every generation but were in fact preformed at Creation. All future generations of an organism were contained, like an matryoshka doll, in ever smaller and more latent manifestations, within that organism. In this sense, the figure of the homunculus is one of infinite repetition and scale: The homunculus inside you is a miniature fully formed human waiting to be born and grow up and it in turn contains other homunculi which contain still others and so on for every generation yet to be born.

In Oath of the Homunculi, the homunculus comes to signify not only the infinite repeatability and scalability of digital and electronic media, but the problems of representing scale within such a context. The artists in this exhibition each represent this difficulty in different ways.

In From the Dark Past (2009), Rafaël Rozendaal presents a continuous flyover of an abstracted landscape of shaded polygons. Without landmarks or noticeable patterns the landscape goes on forever, from a dark past to an equally dark future.

Soft Turn's Enclosed (2009) is a dual-channel circular tour of two different miniature library spaces (mostly built out of books). As the camera pans through the libraries, it seems to ignore the constraints of the architecture it is viewing. In Enclosed, the verisimilitude of architectural models is constantly undermined by the very act of representing scale.

One frame of a GIF animation printed and hung above a video projection of the same animation scaled to approximately 66% (2008) by Paul Slocum, is a video installation which plays with scalable nature of projections and the rigid requirements of printing from digital files. By reducing the size of the projected image to such a small scale (in this case to about 12 inches), Slocum upends the usual relationship between projection and printout.

Can Crusher (2010), a new work by Robert Hengeveld, crushes used pop cans into miniature Donald Judd cubes. Hengeveld conceived the machine after he viewed a Judd cube that was protected by an acrylic casing mounted around the sculpture. Hengeveld's machine also encapsulates the crushed pop cans with acrylic as means of protecting their surface. In converting the industrially manufactured perfect copies of pop cans to smaller perfect copies of Minimalist sculpture, Hengeveld plays with "the social mechanisms through which value is projected onto a material."

Biography

Robert Hengeveld is an installation and multi-media artist whose work explores the boundaries between reality and fiction, and where we find ourselves within that relationship.

He is currently living and working in Toronto, Canada. He completed his MFA at the University of Victoria in 2005 and received an AOCAD from the Ontario College of Art and Design. He continues to exhibit his work across Canada and internationally. Some of his recent and upcoming exhibitions include Natural Forms, Neutral Ground; OK Quoi!?, Struts Gallery; High Performance, Artspace and exhibitions at Interaccess Artist Run Centre, Galarie Sans Nom and Katharine Mulherin Contemporary Art Projects.

Rafaël Rozendaal makes websites as art pieces, pieces are sold with domain name, work remains public, name of collector in title bar.
Collectors in France, UK, Spain, NL and Austria.
Lived in Amsterdam, Rio, Los Angeles, Paris, Tokyo, Portland and Berlin.
Lives and works in hotels.

Born 1980 in Amsterdam.
Father Arie Rozendaal from the Netherlands.
Mother Heloisa Castello Branco from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
Great grandfather Humberto Castello Branco, former president of Brazil.

Paul Slocum is an independent artist, curator, and musician living in Brooklyn, and former director of And/Or Gallery in Dallas, TX. His work often addresses computer technology and culture. Some of Paul's performances and exhibitions include The New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York, Deitch Projects in New York, Transitio MX in Mexico City, README 2005 in Denmark, The Liverpool Biennial, Museum of Contemporary Art Denver, and the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston.

Currently based in Malmö, Sweden, the Canadian artists Sarah Jane Gorlitz (b. 1978, Winnipeg, Canada) and Wojciech Olejnik (b. 1975, Białystok, Poland) have been collaborating on video installation and stop-motion animation since 2006. With simple means their work considers the relationship between the real and the imagined, the intimate and the unfamiliar. They have presented solo exhibitions at YYZ (Toronto, 2010) and Greusslich Contemporary (Berlin, 2010), Eyelevel Gallery (Halifax, 2009), Struts Gallery (Sackville 2008) and OPTICA, Centre D'Art Contemporain, (Montréal, 2008); and recently participated in group exhibitions including INTERFERÊNCIAS - Mostra Pública de Arte (Lisbon, Portugal 2010), Ex-libris, Musée d'art de Joliette, (Joliette, 2010), Dortmund Bodega (Oslo, 2010), 6 picoles cycliques, 3rd Edition, (Lyon, 2009), and Soap Factory (Minneapolis, 2009).

Alex Snukal is the Director of Programming at InterAccess.

Jennifer Cherniack is an artist and arts educator currently based in Montreal. Prior to moving to Montreal, she was the Assistant Curator/Public Programmes Manager of InterAccess, and worked with a variety of arts education organizations in Toronto such as Sketch, Gallery 44, Regent Park Focus and the National Film Board of Canada. This fall she won an OAAG Education Award as part of the Gallery 44's Outreach Programme.

Cherniack is currently pursuing an MFA at Concordia university. Recent projects include The History of Art According to my Archives (as part of The Typology and Topography of Repetition at Xpace Cultural Centre, Toronto), Suggested Topics of Conversation for Art Openings, Gallery Tours, and Other Art Related Events (pin series commission for the Leonard & Bina Ellen Gallery in Montreal, QC) and Train Station<>Radio Station (for the Foire d'art Alternatif de Sudbury, Galerie du Nouvel-Ontario, Sudbury, ON.