Derek Michael Besant: The Dark Woods (Revisited)

DEREK MICHAEL BESANT THE DARK WOODS (REVISITED) | EDITED TEXT BY ALBERTO PÉREZ-GÓMEZ

VERNON PUBLIC ART GALLERY VERNON, BRITISH COLUMBIA CANADA www.vernonpublicartgallery.com

DEREK MICHAEL BESANT THE DARK WOODS (REVISITED) EDITED TEXT BY ALBERTO PÉREZ-GÓMEZ VERNON PUBLIC ART GALLERY

derek Michael Besant The Dark Woods (Revisited)

Vernon Public Art Gallery May 24 - July 17, 2018

Vernon Public Art Gallery 3228 - 31st Avenue, Vernon BC, V1T 2H3 www.vernonpublicartgallery.com 250.545.3173

Catalogue of an exhibition held at the Vernon Public Art Gallery 3228 - 31st Avenue, Vernon, British Columbia, V1T 2H3, Canada May 24 - July 17, 2018 Production: Vernon Public Art Gallery Editor: Lubos Culen Layout and graphic design: Vernon Public Art Gallery Copy editing: The Dark Woods (Revisited) #9, 2018, UV thermal ink transfer on veil scrim, 76 x 64 inches Photography and video: Derek Michael Besant Printing: Get Colour Copies, Vernon, British Columbia, Canada ISBN 978-1-927407-44-8 Copyright Š 2018, Vernon Public Art Gallery All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, except as may be expressly permitted by the 1976 Copyright Act or in writing from the Vernon Public Art Gallery. Requests for permission to use these images should be addressed in writing to the Vernon Public Art Gallery, 3228 31st Avenue, Vernon BC, V1T 2H3, Canada.

Telephone: 250.545.3173 Facsimile: 250.545.9096 Website: www.vernonpublicartgallery.com The Vernon Public Art Gallery is a registered not-for-profit society. We gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the Greater Vernon Advisory Committee/RDNO, the Province of BC’s Gaming Policy and Enforcement Branch, British Columbia Arts Council, the Government of Canada, corporate donors, sponsors, general donations and memberships. Charitable Organization # 108113358RR.

This exhibition is sponsored in part by:

table of CONTENTS

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Executive Director’s Foreword · Dauna Kennedy

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Introduction · Lubos Culen

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Prologue to the Exhibition · Derek Michael Besant

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The Dark Woods (Revisited) - Excerpts · Text by Alberto Pérez-Gómez

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Images of Works in the Exhibition

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Additional Images of Works with Embedded Words

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Additional Images of Works from the Research

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Abreviated Biography · Derek Michael Besant

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Executive Director’s Foreword

It is my pleasure to welcome back Canadian artist, Derek Michael Besant to the Vernon Public Art Gallery with his latest exhibition The Dark Woods (Revisited). Recognized internationally for his large-scale photo-based works we are thrilled to bring work of this caliber to the North Okanagan.

Working in a cross disciplinary collaboration with Alberto Pérez-Gómez (Saidye Rosner Bronfman Professor, History and Theory of Architecture Program, McGill University), Besant presents a collection of hidden messaging within this exhibition. His photo-based work of the forest combined with texts provided by Pérez-Gómez provides opportunities for visitors to explore the printed works and large-scale video projection.

I’d like to thank our funding partners the BC Arts Council, the Regional District of the North Okanagan, and the Province of BC for enabling us to produce quality exhibitions and publications such as this for our audience in the interior of British Columbia. I’d also like to recognize the staff of the VPAG for their work in bringing together the vision of this exhibition for the public of the North Okanagan.

Warmest Regards, Dauna Kennedy Executive Director

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introduction - Derek Michael Besant: The dark woods (revisited)

Derek Besant has been producing large scale artwork since the 1980s, presented both in exhibitions and as public art projects in Canada and Internationally. The innovative use of industrial materials used in advertising for artistic purposes has allowed Besant to produce large scale images using UV thermal transfer printing. His images in the installation are ever so slightly out of focus and they contain embedded fragments of text extracted from the book written by Alberto PérezGómez.1 The author also co-edited the text passages used in the images and as a standalone text reproduced in this publication.

The exhibition The Dark Woods (Revisited) builds on Besant’s use of large scale prints and explore the creation of a psychological experience for the viewer by setting up an environment within the gallery space with images and video projection which reference dark woods environments. An additional use of text elements embedded in the images are designed to invoke associations of navigating the dark forest and the accompanying psychological tension. Although The Dark Woods (Revisited) is conceptually linked to the tradition of landscape representation in Canada, Besant’s concept of the ‘woods’ introduces an underlying psychological factor for the visitor, experienced up close the forest environment he created.

Besant’s focus on the presentation does not rely on the observation of the landscape and its subsequent rendering. Instead, his focus is on presenting details of the flora – close up views of tree trunks and shrubs – on a scale which dwarfs the viewer navigating the images of a dense forest environment. Despite the fact that these images of out of focus views of the forest are quite abstract because of the a lack of clear delineation of shapes, they are also somewhat recognizable, especially observed from across the space of the gallery. The closer the observers position themselves to the work, the images start to dissolve, but the text fragments embedded in the images start to be visible. The shifting duality of out-of-focus / in-focus images and text create a space for the viewers to actively immerse themselves in views of constantly changing environments. The idea of ‘landscape’ as a tool for generating a person’s association definitely shifts the focus from a ‘rendering’ to a multilayered ‘state of being’, most of it in a nonverbal, but felt realm(s), or gestalt. The ‘infusion’ of text fragments in the images further contribute to the viewers’ sense of dislocation of knowable space.

As Besant points out, the intent of the installation is “… to allow one’s psychological experiences of properties found and recalled, when walking through the woods. There are abundant fairy tales that use this place as the stage for retelling that work on our fear factors. Magritte’s painting of the rider on horseback disappearing and reappearing observed through the woods. Kurosawa’s film

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where the forest surrounding a castle, appears to be advancing each night, with the enemy… or Birnam Wood from Macbeth… the Fort McMurray fire. And Anselm Kiefer’s Black Forest woodcuts depicting the [river] Rhine from behind its vertical bars…).2 The moving image of the video inside the forest is equally out of focus. The images flicker and jump and they are reminiscent of old black and white film noir experiments or an archival footage, while also referencing the smudge and erasure of a drawing in charcoal. The silent video with out-offocus shimmering imagery erases the mental clues to the images themselves and creates a neutral moving visual field for the viewers to apprehend. Upon longer observation of the video footage, the visual perception of the moving image enters the state of flux and negates the perceived relationship of positive and negative spaces.

Derek Besant’s exhibition The Dark Woods (Revisited) creates an immersive environment for the viewers to navigate and experience the space as the whole within the context of the narrative fragments embedded in the individual images. Because of the layers of possible meaning and decoding of fragmented narratives, the viewers rely on personal association qualities while engaged with images which offer them hints for interpretation of meaning. While Besant’s exhibition creates a space for the viewers to contemplate the modality of the human condition in general, the exhibition is situated in psychologically charged subliminal space and existential apprehension.

Lubos Culen Curator Vernon Public Art Gallery Endnotes 1

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Alberto Pérez-Gómez, Polyphilo, or the Dark Forest Revisited: An Erotic Epiphany of Architecture (MIT Press, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1992) Excerpt from e-mail communication with Lubos Culen, June 20, 2017

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PROLOGUE TO the EXHIBITION

My studio sits in a river valley in Southern Alberta outside of Calgary in Canada… in a trembling aspen grove of articulated old gnarled trees that are a hardy species found in this part of the world.

For four decades I have regularly walked the paths through these woods and made drawings and taken photographs of the foliage, though I am not a landscape artist… The changing seasons have always yielded interesting phenomena of how frost gathers winter light, the searing disarray of undergrowth foliage, the extraordinary chaos of fallen branches, random debris and shadows through these woods as observational moments in time to encounter.

Last year, I decided to retrace my steps through the woods every week over one full year, taking photographs of the same locations, similar to how David Hockney documented his obsessive sketching of Yorkshire country roads. My view into the woods as subject matter is from a conceptual rather than pictorial point of view, concentrating on effects of light, falling dark and atmospheric properties more than open depicted scenes. The psychological surroundings that Tom Thompson or Emily Carr brought into their paintings as internalized spiritual reactions to their environments is not dissimilar to how Anselm Kiefer has drawn from the Reine River woodcuts he returns to, or his cultivated burned-out farm fields with plowed furrows and despair that are grounds for dissected text elements.

So, in that same spirit of inquiry where an aspect of nature might be a conceptual transition between the physical and cerebral encounter one takes on as a traveler, I was reminded in my resource gathering of a book from the early 1990’s that had a title that resonated in my memory rediscovering it in my library: Alberto Pérez-Gómez’s POLYPHILO or The Dark Forest Revisited (An Erotic Ephiphany of Architecture). Recalling the author’s text as a rich read full of shifting inquiry and revelation, I thought I would contact him to see if he might write for the Vernon Public Art Gallery exhibition catalogue with his perspectives into my process of wandering into the woods as a hypothetic space one might get lost within.

Alberto Pérez-Gómez is the Saidye Rosner Bronfman Professor of the History of Architecture at McGill University in Montréal. Upon receiving my invitation to write for the catalogue, Alberto instead proposed a collaborative assignment to me, where I might reread his book and edit a hidden narrative that exists within its pages. A narrative that could become an extracted “found text element” finding anew, the recesses of my conceptual wander into the forest. This exercise proved to be exactly what Alberto and I had hoped for, and the discovered text emerges as a kind of map through which one might navigate through the artworks in the exhibition.

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After we agreed on the final found text with its poetic yield, observational awareness of the psychological wooded forest-for-the-trees states it evokes in the reader: I embedded fragments of Alberto’s edited text into the visual work itself with his permission. What has resulted is a series of works that have truly come out of working collaboratively through disparate sources to be deconstructed, then reconstructed into a hybrid of image and word that evokes an installed environment into a museum space.

Derek Michael Besant, RCA March 2018

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The Dark Woods (Revisited), 2018, video capture #1

THE DARK WOODS (REVISITED)

Prey of an increasing anguish, I long to discover a way out of this dark forest. Often a flickering light signifies an invitation, ostensibly offering the possibility of abandoning this utopia and actually arriving in some other place.

The absolute brightness and total transparency of the environment again reveals the order of imminent doom.

Most likely, the wanderer in the forest, full of anguish and thirst, would fail when seeking to appease his tormented heart... buried in the forest in which we are lost...

He cannot comprehend how the clarity and cloudiness of reality has to be grasped in the permanent fluctuation of a distant view, which necessarily brings about the revelation of that which is truly at hand: light, shade, the visible, and the invisible.

The square, not surprisingly, is the closest figure to the short, right-hand side of the rectangular plane. On the left is a gentle sloping face that creates the illusion of exiting toward the west, a ramp of sorts that reaches the limits of the object.

Paradise is long lost! Mist and haze, I know full well that their profound meaning is accessible solely as a memory implanted in my body. It is only this, recreated by the words of my poetic imagination that I will ever merge with this sacred and indelible order.

I can inhabit the ravines of a completely rectilinear landscape. The place is permeated by a faint and indescribable music that could have been the cries of animals and birds or a music of the same pitch played with an inexhaustible variety of timbres. My own fractured image is lost within the multiplicity of scales and in the illimitable distance of the transparent silken walls.

The ivory silk of the curtain creases following her motions, betraying the sensuous features of her body while she transcribes her findings onto a large piece of graph paper.

There is probably no murkier shadow than the darkness enveloping a vertical drop... the absolute darkness of the void between the objects and their shadows: the overlap of the visible and the invisible; light and shade, freedom and necessity, life and death, open and enclosed space. A coincidence of dualities manifest through the diaphanous surface plane.

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The experiencing shadow does not exist materially in a fixed dimension, and the object of its experience, the walls and fragments on the plane, exist only insofar as they constitute a threedimensional drawing. This reality, effectively hovering between the conventional three dimensions of obsolete geometry, is defined by hard and precise limits in absolute frozen time.

The inner world, the underworld, is visibly empty... allowing the voyeur to catch a glimpse of the shadow dweller.

This prospect, capturing the edge of the world as it approaches the transverse axis of human sight, is as close as one can come to a presentation of order in the failing distance of post-perspective time. It is, instead, absolutely present as a de-objectified order that creates its own site and does not exist by virtue of its location in Cartesian space.

The solvent of colors and the divider of colors would melt away into gray air if the surfaces of the walls were to even barely touch.

Once I have made sure that the shadow dweller is absent, I decide to abandon the frontal position and move around the triangular object it occurs to me that no human being can hide between the folds of the curtains, nevertheless, my yearning to inhabit this place prevails...

Suddenly an asphyxiating darkness permeates the air; the unmistakable smell of fear. The same familiar landscape materializes under a bizarre obfuscation. Perhaps now, it will be possible to penetrate the mirage...

This total, essential blackness conveys a stillness. Indeed, the blackness of embodied experience there is somber yet vibrant, stirred by invisible winds and by a few corpuscles of live sunlight that radiate within its depths.

I walk, walk, and walk. An immeasurable distance! Perhaps only two or three paces or the length from the tip of my middle finger to the palm of my hand, but I come to uninviting shades of gray.

Despite the fact that ears can certainly hear deeper than eyes can see, a chill silence prevails.

Afraid to continue on this course, I decide for a moment to retrace my route and make my way back.

The thread of Ariadne would be of no use to unravel this order. My own anguish make the path increasingly narrow and somber. Beyond a certain point, however, the slope of the ground can no longer be determined. Darkness descends upon me as if it were a viscous, mercurial fluid, excommunicating all light. Pitch black.

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Am I, in fact, inside Dedalus’s labyrinth, the primordial symbol of cultural order? Have I finally found the concrete materialization of the human condition, the dwelling of being - lost? Perhaps my blood now joins the plasma of the serpent that spirals into the depths of the earth spilling through its crevices searching for the sacred, the primitive geological veins that coagulate at the embryonic tremblings of chaos.

Each frame explodes into darkness in front of my eyes when I attempt to penetrate the spaces by stepping into them. After the explosion has taken place it is possible to detect how the transformation has affected the initial state by squinting.

I take one more step...

In the distance nature is disclosed as a human condition.

A delectable, ambiguous, and ultimately impenetrable landscape captures my gaze and obliterates consciousness. I experience the central drawing in a deceptively linear sequential progression of fourteen frames. The tracings, perhaps primitive marks have a markedly horizontal bias. If this is not a musical score, it is most probable that the series is one of two. The progression contracts in one direction and expands in the other, drawing out through precise black lines on a white field the intrinsic qualities of landscape...

There is only silence: the hollowness of a colossal absence.

Floating, undulating fabrics... under my feet, by my side, exquisite contours, the humid earth and the texture of skin. Our rhythm in walking does not originate in our individual bodies, but rather in the body’s relationship to the elemental ground, our underlying earth. I scarcely begin to forget your dark indifference and you appear again, ever present, and everything else disappears in your wake. In your stride towards the night I divine that it will be possible to erase my memory of the day. The total eclipse. The light.

Paradoxically perhaps, all is natural again in this landscape; no human intervention is evident.

Perhaps now the lost dimension, the much sought after metaphor of the realm of experience, can be recovered or even transcended, precisely before twilight.

Vaguely perceptible along the periphery the feasting silhouettes of substantial transformation of the elements seems now inevitable. I walk with my eyes beyond the navigator’s canopy.

The place now exists only in experiential time and space, shadow and light, its objectification beyond the scope of present possibilities. A thick charcoal layer representing somber darkness.

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The indelible shadows incised on the ground...

The clue is probably in the fold of the map, in a twist of the mind. What is the depth of field?

Where is the ground? At right angles to this world are invisible images and captive objects that remain out of focus; a calendar with a black page for each week, a white field for January.

It is early in the evening, but the sun is rising. There is no impression of speed at all, only endless ascension pulled by the invisible beam of the inertial navigation system, leaving the world of previous experience definitively astern, always at right angles, in the folds or cuts.

The ground is constructed with the essence of laurel, cypress and cedar, linden and ash trees. Bark, leaves, and other vegetable parts, covered casually with sheets of paper and rubbed with a lead pencil, provide a sudden intensification of our visionary faculties. In every sector often contradictory superimpositions of images results in a fertile topography for amorous hallucination.

These landscapes increasingly lose the specific characteristics of the original material to resemble other distant images with an unbelievable precision, evoking visions that reveal a primary obsession: a true recreation of nature, the unmediated demiurgic act itself, thoroughly new and enigmatic.

Intricate interconnections between paths and enclosures are resolved by a novel form of pictographic writing, a pure gestural memory.

The columnar trunks, once robust and supple, disintegrate and decay. Only such places embodying simultaneously harmony and monstrosity, order and confusion, light and shadow, disclosure and concealment, not as polar opposites but as aspects of the same reality, are the proper ground for losing one’s way.

Darkness was still dissipating, together with the evanescent fogs of the somber night. Light was about to triumph over our inveterate nightmares of thunder and unreason, the fragile vibration of the spider web and the weeds singing in the wind. The flickering light was always changing, new yet always the same.

White summer nights, white winter days. Always blazing white. Light reflected off the river at the core of nothing, like the milk of the moon. In the darkest corner of my profound silence is a compressed space of unbounded dimensions. Beyond the constricted and seemingly endless rectilinear prospect and under the hard blistery skin: a white curtain, total silence.

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The landscape is empty, without a single living being. The frame has vanished and the camera, previously fixed, now follows a long and deliberate lateral movement.

I noticed there was something resembling a piece of wood at my feet that prevented me from taking flight. A dark vapor transformed into black space. There are deep and high-pitched pains, andantes and furiosos, prolonged notes, fermatas, arpeggios and chromatic progressions, abrupt silences...

The bodily fragments are totally enveloped by a humid, invisible dark fire. The new light, diffused in infinite space, is obviously a shadow. The glaring presence of a clearing made possible by the spectator’s open vision: primordial substance of infused mind and matter, the final coincidence, supreme apex of analogy.

This “found text” was extracted by Derek Besant with permission of the author, Alberto PérezGómez from his book Polyphilo or The Dark Forest Revisited / An Erotic Epiphany of Architecture

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The Dark Woods (Revisited), 2018, vido capture #2

images of works in the exhibition

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The Dark Woods (Revisited) #1, 2018, UV thermal ink transfer on veil scrim, 86 x 64 inches

The Dark Woods (Revisited) #2, 2018, UV thermal ink transfer on veil scrim, 64 x 98 inches

The Dark Woods (Revisited) #3, 2018, UV thermal ink transfer on veil scrim, 88 x 64 inches

The Dark Woods (Revisited) #5, 2018, UV thermal ink transfer on veil scrim, 116 x 64 inches

The Dark Woods (Revisited) #4, 2018, UV thermal ink transfer on veil scrim, 64 x 231 inches

The Dark Woods (Revisited) #6, 2018, UV thermal ink transfer on veil scrim, 88 x 64 inches

The Dark Woods (Revisited) #7, 2018, UV thermal ink transfer on veil scrim, 64 x 121 inches

The Dark Woods (Revisited) #8, 2018, UV thermal ink transfer on veil scrim, 88 x 64 inches

The Dark Woods (Revisited) #9, 2018, UV thermal ink transfer on veil scrim, 76 x 64 inches

The Dark Woods (Revisited) #10, 2018, UV thermal ink transfer on veil scrim, 64 x 51 inches

The Dark Woods (Revisited) #11, 2018, UV thermal ink transfer on veil scrim, 103 x 64 inches

The Dark Woods (Revisited), 2018, video capture #3

images of accompanying works with one embedded word The Dark Woods (Revisited) series, 2018, UV thermal ink transfer on veil scrim, 10 x 10 inches each

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The Dark Woods (Revisited) , 2018, vido capture #2

images of alternate works from the research The Dark Woods (Revisited) series, 2018, uv thermal ink transfer on veil scrim, 10 x 10 inches each

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Derek Michael Besant 2018 abreviated biography

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Derek Michael Besant, RCA Born 1950 Alberta, Canada Education BFA Honors, 1969-73, University of Calgary, Calgary, Alberta Graduate Studies 1974, University of Calgary University of Calgary / The 1999 Distinguished Alumni Award RCA 1978, Elected to Royal Canadian Academy of Arts, Ottawa, Canada GBK 2010, Elected member Gesellschaft bildender Künstlerinnen und Künstler Österreichs, Künstlerhaus,Vienna, Austria 2016, appointed to Editorial Board of PRINTMAKING TODAY, London UK Academic Associations Fellow of Wake Forest University, Winston-Salem, North Carolina USA since 1995 VA Lecturer, Texas State University, San Marcos, Texas USA since 1980 McKinney Scholar Lecturer, University of Indiana, Bloomington, USA 2016.

Employment Exhibition Designer, The Glenbow Museum, Canada, 1973-1977 Head, Drawing Program/ Dept Fine Arts, Alberta College of Art and Design, Calgary, 1979-1993 Professor Emeritus / ACAD Fine Arts Department, Permanent Faculty 1977- 2017 Selected Solo Exhibitions 2018 Nothing Personal, The Ruskin Gallery, Cambridge University, Great Britain Besant / An Atmosphere of Shadows, Prince Takamado Gallery / Canadian Embassy, Tokyo, Japan The Dark Woods Revisited, Vernon Public Art Gallery, Vernon, British Columbia, Canada 2017 The Dis-Integrated City, The Centro de Arte Moderno, Madrid Spain 2016 Douro International Biennial Commissioner of Canada solo exhibition, Coa Art Museum, Portugal 2015 IN OTHER WORDS, feature solo Edinburgh International Arts Festival, Scotland

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2015 The End of Language • Akademija Centre for Visual Research, Belgrade Serbia • Contemporary Art Gallery, Zrenjanin, Serbia • JP Kulturni Centar Bar, Serbia 2014 The End of Language, Museum of Contemporary Art Vojvodina, Novi Sad, Serbia BrokenGround: Seven Cities, Artpool Contemporary Art Space, Budapest, Hungary 2013 BrokenGround / The Air, featured for In-Print-Out, Künstlerhaus Museum Vienna, Austria The End Of Language, MODEM Museum of Modern + Contemporary Art, Debrecen, Hungary Fifteen Restless Nights, Visual Arts Alberta VAAA Gallery, Edmonton, Canada The End of Language, Vézprem Contemporary Art Museum, Vészprem, Hungary 2012 Nuit Blanche Paris, Semaine des Cultures Etrangeres, Canadian Cultural Centre / Canadian Embassy, Paris, France Public Places / Private Thoughts, 100-site City Metro Transit installation, CONTACT International Photography Festival 2012, Toronto Canada FACE, curated for the Arezzo International Photography Festival, Italy BrokenGround: Seven Cities, Phoenix Brighton Contemporary Art Space, Brighton UK Fifteen Restless Nights, MOCA Museum of Contemporary Art, Calgary, Alberta Canada Hidden & Forbidden Identities / Outdoor Video Project on 6 sites across Venice, Italy.

Procurate Court Yards / Giardini Gardens / San Giovanni Battista / Venezia Terminal Passeggeri / Museum Palazzo Grimani / I.R. E Zitelle 2011 Derek Besant / A Loss For Words, Alberta Society of Artists / Alberta Foundation for the Arts TREX Touring Program, Canada The End of Language, Grande Prix Exhibition for 2011 International Biennial Györ, MMA Municipal Museum Art Association, Szombathely Museum, Hungary Fifteen Restless Nights, Art Gallery of Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada The End of Language, Vernon Public Art Gallery, Vernon, British Columbia, Canada 2010 Body Of Water, Norske Grafikere Museum, Oslo, Norway A Loss for Words, TREX Alberta Society of Artists / AFA Touring Exhibition 15 Restless Nights, The Reach Art Museum, Abbotsford British Columbia Canada

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2010 15 Restless Nights, Connexion Contemporary Art Space, Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada The Greenhouse Effect, Society of Northern Alberta Print-Artists, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada 2009 15 Nuits Blanches, International Biennial of Contemporary Prints: Museum of Modern + Contemporary Art, Liège, Belgium 15 Nuits Blanches, Engramme Centre de Art Actuel, Québec City, Canada 2008 Body Of Water, Algården Art Centre, Borås, Sweden Idegenek (Strangers), Municipal Museum of Art, Synagogue installation, Györ, Hungary 15 Restless Nights, Kelowna Art Gallery, Kelowna, British Columbia 15 Restless Nights, Raymond-Lasnier Centre d’Exposition, Trois-Rivières, Québec 15 Restless Nights, The Veszprém Art Museum, Veszprém, Hungary 15 Restless Nights, The Dunaszerdahely Contemporary Art Gallery, Dunaszerdahely, Slovakia 2007 15 Restless Nights, The Municipal Museum of Art, Györ, Hungary Surface Noise + Wave Data, Akedemija Art + Research Center, Belgrade, Serbia Body of Water, Podgorica Cultural Center, Capital City, Montenegro Body of Water, Gregoric Cultural Centre, Petrovac, Montenegro Body of Water, Marko Gregoric Cultural Center, Petrovac, Montenegro East End, collaboration with John Dean, The Nickle Arts Museum, Calgary, Alberta 2006 Body of Water, Contemporary Visual Art Centre Vestylland, Bøvlingbjerg, Denmark Body of Water, Skopje City Art Museum, Skopje, Macedonia Body of Water, Zavicajni Museum, Hercig-Novi, Hercig-Novi 15 Restless Nights, 30th Anniversary art installation commission, Harbourfront Centre, Toronto, Ontario Surface Noise, Otpetchatki International Art Triennial, Vyhod Cultural Media-Centre, Petrozavodsk, Russia 2005 Archeopteryx, The Fine Arts Building Gallery, University of Alberta, Edmonton 2002 El Noche en Blanco, Centro Cultural Borges, Buenos Aires, Argentina, Museo de Arte Contemporaneo, Bahia Blanco, Argentina, Museo Fotographica Technologio, Santa Fe, Argentina

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2001 Migratory, The Nickle Arts Museum, University of Calgary, Calgary, Alberta La Noche en Blanco, International Festival of Light, Centro Cultural Borges, Buenos Aires, Argentina (tour): Museo de Fotographia Technologico, Rosario Museo Castagnino, Rafaela Museo de la Cuidad, Province of Santa Fe, Museo de Arte Contemporaneo, Bahia Blanca, Buenos Aires, Argentina 2000 The Sleepless Night, Museo de Arte Moderno Buenos Aires, Argentina, Art Gallery of Mississauga, Ontario, Open Space, Victoria BC 1999 The Print Inside, Jyv채skyl채 Taidemuseo Art Museum, Jyv채skyl채, Finland The Sleepless Night, Open Space, Victoria BC The Sleepless Night, Art Gallery of Mississauga, Ontario The Sleepless Night, Latitude 53 Gallery, Edmonton, Alberta 1998 Box of Letters: Correspondence of Mark Todd and Derek Besant, The Lubbock Fine Arts Centre, Texas 1995 Les Voyeurs de Songes, Museo de Arte Contemporaneo, Aguascalientes, Mexico Location + Displacement (with Bill Laing), Instituto Cultural de Providencia, Santiago, Chile The Abyss Of Sleep / Couples, Douglas Udell Gallery, Vancouver, BC The Memory Obscurred, Canada Festival Invitation, Museum of Art, Sao Paulo, Brazil 1992 Dragging the River (with Mark Todd), San Antonio Museum of Art, San Antonio, Texas Dragging the River (with Mark Todd), Galvaston Art Center, Texas EDEN, Woltjen-Udell Gallery, Vancouver, BC 1990 De-composition, Art Gallery of Hamilton, Hamilton, Ontario 1989 The Waterfall Drawings, Mira Godard Gallery, Toronto Walking the Waterfalls, Woltjen-Udell Gallery, Vancouver, BC 1987 Besant / Sites, Canada House Gallery, Trafalgar Square, London, England

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1987 Second Sighting, Metropolitan Museum Art Prize, Florida 1986 Besant /Sites, The Whyte Museum, Banff, Alberta Diagrams, Mira Godard Gallery, Toronto 1985 Besant / New Drawings, Woltjen-Udell Gallery, Edmonton, Alberta Diagrams, The Nickle Arts Museum, Calgary, Alberta 1984 Walkways, Southern Alberta Art Gallery, Lethbridge, Alberta 1983 Walkways + Working Drawings, Mira Godard Gallery, Toronto Corridors, The Downstairs Gallery, Edmonton, Alberta 1981 Derek Michael Besant, Mira Godard Gallery, Toronto and Calgary 1980 Derek Besant / Three Room Suite, Mira Godard Gallery, Toronto New Work from Far Away, World Print Council, San Francisco, California Derek Besant, New Work, Mira Godard Gallery, Calgary, Alberta 1978 The Drawing Room, Mira Godard Gallery, Toronto 1977 Derek Besant / Halls and Mirrors: New Watercolors, Aggregation Gallery, Toronto 1973 Derek Besant / New Work, Aggregation Gallery, Toronto Group Exhibitions 2017 Departures / Masterworks: Invitational, The Ardel Museum of Art, Bangkok, Thailand HOPE, Collaborative Creativity, invitation project for Munich International Airport, Germany

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2017 Light Matter: The Intersection of Photography, Grunwald Museum, Bloomington, Indiana USA Falling Water, NBC / USA Television series shooting Flatiron Mural, Toronto, Canada The Secret Gesture, Invitational, Cultural Center Santa Maria della Pietà, Piazza Giovanni XXIII Cremona, Italy Splitgraphic International Art Biennial, Old City Hall Gallery, Split, Croatia The Brain Project, Baycrest Health Sciences, City of Toronto, Canada The Japan Canada International Exchange, Art Gallery of Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada At Home / The Interior in Canadian Art, Agnes Etherington Art Centre, Kingston, Ontario, Canada IAPA International, (invited) Jinling Museum of Fine Arts, Nanjing, China INTER-WOVEN: New Perspectives on Canadian Textile & Printmaking, The Kobro Museum, Academy of Fine Arts Lodz and The Warsaw National Cultural Centre Gallery, Poland Yelabuga International Invitational Drawing Biennial, Architectural Art Museum, Tatarstan, Russia Masterworks Contemporary Canadian Printmaking, (invited) Ardel Museum, Bangkok, Thailand The Enchanted Woods, International Festival dei Saperi / Associatione Solstizo d’Estate, Rosia, Italy Ulus International Triennial, (Invited) Art Pavilion Cvijeta Zuzoric, Belgrade, Serbia 6th Guanlan International Biennial, Guanlan Print Museum, China Varna International Biennial, Boris Georgiev City Art Gallery, Bulgaria Watercolour YYC , Society of Canadian Painters in Watercolour Conference, Calgary Canada L’Associazione Nazionale Incisori Italiani, Padova, Italy Bienala International GRAPHIUM 2017, Museum of Banat, Timsoara Art Museum, Romania 8th International Splitgraphic Biennial, People’s Square City Hall Gallery, Split, Croatia 2016 International Biennial ROC 2016, National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts, Republic of China Enterprise Square / Collected Works, Edmonton University of Alberta, Canada Canada Prints, (invited) Kyoto City Art Museum, Japan Xuyuan International Research & Creation Centre Biennial, Beijing, China Associazione Nazionale Incisori Italiani, Vigonza, Italy 20th Japan Media Arts Festival 2016, Hiroshima and Sapporo Art Centres International Print Alliance Invitational, Beijing Working People’s Culttural Palace Nanjing Jinling Art Museum / Tianjin Art Museum / Shijiazhuang Art Museum / Shenzen Art Museum Le Corps en Question(s), Hellerau European Center for the Arts, Dresden, Germany THE RED, Project room MAG3 Schiffamstgasse, Vienna, Austria Dada Cannot Be Understood, Voix Visuelle, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada Varna Ex-Libris 2016, Largo Art Gallery & Museum, Bulgaria Arte Associatione Padre Diego Donati, Perugula, Italia 2016 Juno Awards Canada, Rudsak Art Project, Montreal, Quebec.

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2015 The Other, Photography Centre of Thessanloniki Greece The Body In Question, (invitational) Enterprise Square Exhibition Centre Edmonton Canada Dance Festival, Ottawa, Canada, Mute Sound, (invitational) Zaragoza Art Centre, Spain Japan/Canada: Connected, University of Calgary, Dept. of Arts, Alberta ,Canada Maximo Ramos International Award for Graphics, Centro Torrente Ballester, Ferrol, Spain Contemporary Engraving Biennial, The National Art Museum Moldova, Romania Understanding Reduction, (invitational) Elisabeth Anna-Palais, Oldenburg, Germany Resonance, (invitational) The Shengzhi Art Centre, Beijing, China Varna International Biennial, Bulgaria World In Quarantine, International Triennial, Bentara Budaya, Jakarta, Indonesia 2015 International Biennial,, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Liège, Belgium Representing Canada in Krakow International Triennial, Poland Beauty & the Beast , Eye Productions TV, Toronto, Canada Yelabuga, State Architectural + Art Museum, Triennial, Russia Iosif Iser INternational Contemporary Biennial, Prahova Art Museum, Romania 5th Guanlan International Biennial, China Representing Canada in 4th Bangkok International Drawing Triennial, Thailand Honourable Mention: 2015 Sint Niklaas Biennial, Stedelijk Museum, Belgium Grand Prix awarded from The Associazione Nazionale Inciziori Italiani, Italy Triennial ULUS, Belgrade Serbia, Certificate of Honor Premio Acqui XII Edition, Acqua Terme, Italy Cerveira International de Arte Invitational Sculpture Biennial, Portugal Impact/ Changing World, Technology as Metaphor Inspiration Utopia Dystopia, Invitational Conference, Hangzhou China Newcastle World Cup / Northern Print International Graphic Project, (invitational), UK Representing Canada in Triennial Ekoplagat Invitational, Slovak Republic WATER, (invitational) The Whyte Museum, Banff, Canada 2014 Second Floor Screens, The Saatchi Gallery, London, Great Britain 6th International Artist’s Book Biennial, (invited) Bibliotheca Alexandrina, Alexandria, Egypt Nazionale Incisori Italiani 2014 Biennial, Engravers Association Museum, Padova, Italy XV Biennial International Grafic, Ostrow Wielkopolski, Poland Jogja International Print Biennial 2014, Yogyakarta, Indonesia 15th International Graphics Biennial, Lodz Museum, Lodz, Poland Printed in Taiwan/ Canada, Sun Yat-Sen Zhonshan National Gallery, Taipei, Taiwan Triennial Belgrade 2014, Zuzoric Art Pavilion, Belgrade, Serbia

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Arte in Movimento / 2nd International Colaboratrio, City Museum Puglia, Italy Art Gallant Franz von Bayros Project, Musé de l’Erotisme, Paris, France (invitational) The FACE, Samara Art Museum, Russia (invitational) The Art of Portraiture 1920’s to Present Day, Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies, Banff 5th International Biennial, Archive of Pancevo, Serbia Colaboratrio “Arte In Movimento”, Gravina in Puglia, Italy / Sao Paulo Brazil / Lima and Ayacucho Peru Cultural Center Casa Matteo Ricci Borderland: The Entropy of Identities, (invited) Nottingham International Video Festival, UK Une Vision du Futur, Centre d’artistes Voix Visuelle, Ottawa, Canada International Graphic Biennial Iosif Iser, Ploiesta Art Museum, Romania 2013 Premo Premio Grafica Italiana, Associazione Nazionale Incisori Italiani, Vigonza, Padova, Italy Bibliotheca Alexandria International Biennale Art Center, Alexandria, Egypt Made In the 1970’s / Made in the 1980’s, The Glenbow Museum, Calgary, Alberta, Canada Global Print International, Museum Régua, Douro, Spain (invited) 24 Poèmes de Jacques Rancourt, Transignum, Paris, France + Namur, Belgium Size Matters: Big Prints From Around The World, University of Alberta Museums, Enterprise Square Galleries, Edmonton Alberta, Canada 9th Biennale Internationale Contemporaine de Liège, Musée des Beaux-Arts de Liège, Belgium Biennale d’Estampe Contemporaine de Trois-Rivières, BIECTR Québec, Canada Al-Mutanabbi Street International Artist’s Book Exhibition, The Cambridge Arts Council, Massachusetts / The Santa Fe University of Art + Design, New Mexico / San Francisco Center for Book, California / Center for Book Arts, New York City, NY / Newark Public Library, New Jersey / Collins Memorial Library, University of Puget Sound, Washington USA. The John Rylands Library, Manchester UK. 17th International Print Biennial 2013, Boris Georgiev City Art Gallery, Varna, Bulgaria XI Engraving Premio Aqui Biennale per l’Incisione, Monferrato, Italy 7th International Biblioteca di Bodio Lomnage 2013-2014 Italy Selected Awards 1977 Metropolitan Museum Award, International print Biennial, Miami, Florida 1979 Andrew Nelson Whitehead Award, Los Angeles Print Society, California 1984 World Culture Prize for Letters, Arts & Sciences, Centre Studie Richerche delle Nazioni, Milan, Italy 1987 Lieutenant-Governor of Alberta’s Art Achievement Award 1999 Distinguished Alumni Award, University of Calgary, Calgary, Alberta 2005 Smithsonian American Museum Portfolio Award, Boston Printmakers USA 2007 Third Prix Digital Imaging, Novosibirsk International Art Biennial, Russia

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Selected Awards continued 2007 MUDA Mayor’s Urban Design Awards / The City of Calgary, Canada 2009 Grand Prize, Trois-Rivières International Estampe Contemporaine Biennial 2009 Creative & Critical Studies UBC Purchase Award, British Columbia, Canada 2009 Grand Prix, International Masters Drawing Biennial, MMA Museum, Györ, Hungary 2010 Matrices Jury Synthesis Award, Hungarian Electrographic Art Association, Budapest 2012 The Printroom Award / 8th British International Printmakers Council, London UK 2011 Science & Humanities Research Council of Canada SSHRC Fine Arts Creation Grant 2012 Science & Humanities Research Council of Canada SSHRC Dissemination Grant 2014 Canada Council Project Grant 2015 Honorable Mention Stedelijke Museum Sint-Niklaas, Belgium 2015 Triennial ULUS Belgrade Serbia / Certificate of Honour 2015 CADA City of Calgary Arts & Development Project Grant 2015 Grand Prize Arte Grafica Italiana 2015 Associazione Nazionale Incisori Italiani Selected: Curator of exhibitions include:

· Four Calgary Printmakers, Agnes Etherington Art Centre, Kingston, 1973

· · · · · · ·

Canadian Art from Alberta, Canadian Embassy Galleries, Boston, Chicago, USA, 1976 Canadian Art, Phoenix Brighton Contemporary Art Centre, UK, 2010 Novosibirsk International Biennial (Canada), State Art Museum, Russia, 2009 Canadian Art / Italian Graphic Biennial, Cremona Civic Museum, Italy, 2012 Commissioner for Canada, 2014 Douro International Biennial, Portugal The New World: Canadian Art, MODEM Museum of Contemporary Art, Debrecen, Hungary, 2013 Inter-Woven: New Perspectives on Canadian Contemporary Textile & Printmaking, Kobro Museum, Academy of Fine Arts, Lodz / The National Cultural Centre Gallery, Warsaw, Poland, 2017

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DEREK MICHAEL BESANT THE DARK WOODS (REVISITED) | EDITED TEXT BY ALBERTO PÉREZ-GÓMEZ

VERNON PUBLIC ART GALLERY VERNON, BRITISH COLUMBIA CANADA www.vernonpublicartgallery.com

DEREK MICHAEL BESANT THE DARK WOODS (REVISITED) EDITED TEXT BY ALBERTO PÉREZ-GÓMEZ VERNON PUBLIC ART GALLERY