Year Zero is a solo show of new sculpture and works on paper by the Canadian artist Jason de Haan (b. 1981). The exhibition, his second with the gallery, continues his investigation of geologic and deep time, the speculations of science fiction, spiritual experience, cosmic phenomena and re-animated material begun with Like Dust, his first show here. Like Dust, which Canadian Art cited as one of their Top Ten in Canada in 2010, included crystals, salt, marble, wood, metal, foil and “speculatively haunted” mirrors. Year Zero brings together a similarly diverse range of materials including: a small metal sphere that contains one melted coin from each of the world’s active currencies, carved alabaster, gold ring and gold leaf, petrified wood, florescent paper, a cyanotype made during a partial lunar eclipse, and soil from the Iridium Layer (the layer of earth’s crust formed by the settled dust of the meteorite that struck the Yucatan Peninsula 65 million years ago). About the idea of Year Zero the artist has written “that uncertain and unexpected spaces are able to yield a multitude of possibilities and sustain growth. A fixed point that is able to travel temporally both backward or forward simultaneously, or conversely, the exact moment of the ending of one thing and the beginning of another (or vice versa). Flexibility of starting points. In which particular environmental/natural conditions/systems complete/animate/determine the work. The collapsing of the Classical and Science Fiction.”
Jason de Haan graduated from the Alberta College of Art in 2005. Upcoming solo shows and projects include Nowhere Bodily is Every Where Ghostly at SAAG in 2012 and the Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery in 2013; a residency at the Museo de la Ciudad, Querataro, Mexico and The Arctic Circle Residency in Svalbard. Recent projects include The Wood And Wave Each Other Know (with Miruna Dragan) at the Khyber ICA; Paleofuturity at Modern Fuel, 100 Ages at Nuit Blanche and Future Future Ages at Latitude53 (all 2011). De Haan was also included in Sleepless Nights: Visions from Western Canada at Kling and Bang Galleri, Iceland (2009).
