The Magus @ The Commons

The Magus
Jaimz and C. Graham Asmundson

Corner Pieces: Texts for Loitering

a poster project by Lance Blomgren



The Commons is proud to present the exhibition The Magus. Curated by Noam Gonick, this project brings together  C. Graham Asmundson's paintings, drawings and works in yarn with The Magus, 2011, a film work by his son Jaimz Asmundson which documents his father's artistic process.  Seen here together for the first time, it is a focused glimpse into their unique creative and intergenerational collaboration. The exhibition will open Friday, November 23, 2012 and running until Sunday, January 6, 2013.

C. Graham Asmundson received a MFA from the Concordia University and has been a prominent artist and cultural worker in Winnipeg for many years, though rarely exhibiting outside his home community. His son Jaimz Asmundson is an experimental filmmaker, video artist, and electronic musician. They recently collaborated on The Magus, 2011, Jaimz’ groundbreaking documentary about his father's transcendent art practice. Graham's works create allegorical fields of figures at times mystical, often playfully queer and insurrectionary. Jaimz uses film, video and animation techniques to penetrate deeply into his father’s unusual process whereby random impulses, channeled from the supernatural world, guide the artist while in a trance state. His bold art making has often been the centre of controversy, including the Plug In Gallery, Winnipeg, billboard project Homophobia is Killing Us, 1991, which was defaced by the Ku Klux Klan, leading to death threats. Jaimz Asmundson has exhibited in numerous festivals and  gallery contexts. Selected screenings for The Magus include FIFA - Festival International du Films sur l’Art (Montreal), Hong Kong International Film Festival, MIX NY and Lume International Film Festival (Brazil) – Artistic Contribution Award.

The opening reception will be preceded by a conversation with curator Noam Gonick and Jaimz and C. Graham Asmundson at 7pm in the exhibition.

Also at this time Lance Blomgren’s will present Corner Pieces: Texts for Loitering. As part of his ongoing series of public posters he has produced short texts written for and to be posted in the immediate environs of The Commons. Undermining the impersonal, public tone of the urban poster with an openly subjective, mundane and seemingly meaningless series of observations and histories, Texts for Loitering offers a contemplative or dumbfounding moment for local passersby and wanderers, hustlers and flâneurs. These posters function as an associative intervention, addressing both the reader and site itself, and work to implicate the reader in his or her own role within the larger relational—and often celebratory—flow of events in the neighbourhood.

Lance Blomgren’s text projects have been exhibited in Banff, Chicago, Berlin, and most recently as part of Magnetic Norths (Leonard and Bina Ellen Gallery, Montreal).  He is the author of the novella Walkups, and Corner Pieces, both published by Conundrum Press. Blomgren is a MA candidate in Curatorial Studies program at UBC.

The Commons is a venue for the presentation of art in all of its forms. In this way The Commons means to be a place where disciplines meet and mix, a place for cross fertilization and dialogue. The Commons facilitates the presentation of international art in Vancouver through collaboration with galleries from around the world and seeks to foster new economies for local artists through our exhibition program.

The Magus
Jaimz and C. Graham Asmundson
curated by Noam Gonick

Corner Pieces: Texts for Loitering

a poster project by Lance Blomgren


11/24/12 - 06/01/13
opening reception Friday November 23, 8pm
Curator/ Artists Conversation 7pm

This exhibition has been made possible with the assistance of the Winnipeg Arts Council 

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