Charles Stankievech
Charles Stankievech | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1978 (age 47–48) |
| Known for | artist, writer, educator and curator |
| Movement | Conceptual art |
Charles Stankievech (born 1978) is a Canadian artist, writer, publisher and curator.
Early life and education
Stankievech was born in 1978 in Okotoks, Alberta. He graduated with an MFA from Concordia University in Montreal, later moving to Dawson City in 2007 where he was a founding member of the Yukon School of Visual Art. He stayed in Yukon for five years, moving full-time to Berlin in 2012.[1]
Art career
| External videos | |
|---|---|
| The 2016 Sobey Art Award - Charles Stankievech (2:10 min), National Gallery of Canada, retrieved 27 April 2025 – via YouTube |
Many of his works critically engage military architecture and surveillance and is a driving force behind the idea of fieldwork in contemporary art.[2][3]
Stankievech participated in the Canadian Forces Artists Program twice, in 2011 and 2015, creating a "transformation" of the program through critical contemporary art.[4] His 2013 35mm film installation The Soniferous Æther of the Land Beyond the Land Beyond was shot over the course of two weeks at CFS Alert (the northernmost settlement on Earth), and is part of a series of fieldworks he made that look at remote outpost architecture, military infrastructure, and the embedded landscape.[5] The film, along with a custom built 35mm film looping projection system, is part of the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts collection.[6]
In 2014, Stankievech's exhibition Counterintelligence premiered at the Justina M. Barnicke Gallery at the University of Toronto. A "careful archival research" exhibition with "provocative implications" according to Artforum,[7] Murray Whyte of the Toronto Star described it as "a dizzying array of material, some of it absurd, much of it shocking".[8] The exhibition was awarded both Thematic Exhibition of the Year and best Catalogue Essay for 2014 by the Ontario Association of Art Galleries.[9] In 2011 Stankievech was the West Coast and Yukon nominee and in 2016 the Ontario nominee for the Sobey Art Award.[10] Stankievech's exhibition Monuments as Ruin was awarded an Ontario Association of Art Galleries 2015 Exhibition of the Year Award and was acquired by the AEAC at Queen's University.[11]
Stankievech's ambitious exhibition The Desert Turned To Glass (2023) was commissioned for the centenary of the invention of the planetarium and revolved around an immersive film "The Eye of Silence" projected on a dome screen.[12] The work in its various forms has since toured from Calgary to Berlin, Hamburg, Copenhagen, Düsseldorf, Oakville, Prague, Munich, and the Rjiksmuseum Twenthe. [13]
Publishing
In 2011, Stankievech co-founded the Press K. Verlag in Dawson City / Berlin. The first imprints were registered with ISBNs in Canada with later imprints in Germany when he moved there full-time.[14] The press was named "K." after the character in Kafka's writing, whom Stankievech wrote a thesis on in 2002.
From 2015-2025, he was an Editor of Afterall Journal, a peer-review journal published by the University of Chicago Press.
References
Citations
- ^ Enright (2013); CBC Radio-Canada (2016).
- ^ Loncar-Bartolini (2015); Glessing (2015).
- ^ Hannah (2019).
- ^ Brandon, Laura (2021). War Art in Canada: A Critical History. Toronto: Art Canada Institute. ISBN 978-1-4871-0271-5
- ^ Woods (2013).
- ^ MBAM, Charles Stankievech: The Soniferous Æther of the Land Beyond the Land Beyond https://www.mbam.qc.ca/en/works/67249/
- ^ Moser (2014).
- ^ Whyte (2014).
- ^ Ontario Association of Art Galleries (2014).
- ^ CBC Radio-Canada 2016.
- ^ Queen's University (2015).
- ^ Stankievech (2023).
- ^ Hampton (2024); Robinson (2023); Volmers (2023); Art Gallery of Ontario (2023); KIN Brussels (2023); Kothe (2024).
- ^ Enright (2013).
Sources
- "Behind The Desert Turned to Glass". AGOInsider. Art Gallery of Ontario. 5 April 2023. Retrieved 26 April 2025.
- "Ontario - Charles Stankievech". CBC Radio-Canada. 7 November 2016. Archived from the original on 26 April 2025. Retrieved 22 April 2025.
- Enright, Robert (June 2013). "Outposting, Edgings Towards Art and Science: An Interview with Charles Stankievech". Border Crossings Magazine. Winnipeg, MB. Archived from the original on 13 April 2025. Retrieved 26 April 2025.
- Glessing, Jill (22 January 2015). "Charles Stankievech and the Art of Surveillance". Canadian Art. Archived from the original on 9 February 2025. Retrieved 26 April 2025.
- Hannah, Dehlia (2019). A Year Without Winter. NYC: Columbia University Press. ISBN 9781941332382.
- Hampton, Chris (4 December 2024). "At a small art gallery in Oakville, Ont., a meteor is about to strike". CBC News. Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. Archived from the original on 22 January 2025. Retrieved 22 April 2025.
- "Charles Stankievech - KIN". KIN Brussels. 2023. Retrieved 26 April 2025.
- Kothe, Juliet (2024). "Charles Stankievech: The Desert Turned to Glass" (PDF). Sies+Höke. Retrieved 2025-09-19.
- Loncar-Bartolini, Olivia (16 January 2015). "Panelists discuss architecture and surveillance". The Queen's University Journal. Archived from the original on 7 December 2023. Retrieved 26 April 2025.
- Moser, Gabrielle (February 2014). ""CounterIntelligence"". Artforum. NYC, NY. Retrieved 19 September 2025.
- "Awards: 2014". Ontario Association of Art Galleries. 2014. Archived from the original on 13 May 2021. Retrieved 27 April 2025.
- "Charles Stankievech". Edmonton Journal. Edmonton, AB: Postmedia Network. 29 January 2015. Retrieved 26 April 2025.
- "Charles Stankievech: Monument as Ruin". Agnes. Kingston, ON: Queen's University. 2015. Retrieved 26 April 2025.
- Robinson, Lissa (27 March 2023). "Charles Stankievech: Artist probes fringes of perception and depths of metaphysics". Galleries West. Retrieved 22 April 2025.
- Stankievech, Charles (2023). "Eye of Silence". Stankievech. Retrieved 2025-09-19.
- Volmers, Eric (4 March 2023). "Epic Contemporary Calgary exhibit explores elemental questions about the origins of life". Calgary Herald. Calgary, AB. Archived from the original on 26 April 2025. Retrieved 26 April 2025.
- Whyte, Murray (30 January 2014). "Exhibit deliberately muddy and sensational". The Toronto Star. Toronto, ON. Retrieved 26 April 2025.
- Woods, Michael (8 November 2013). "Sketching a glimpse of military life". The Ottawa Citizen. Ottawa, ON. Retrieved 26 April 2025 – via Newspapers.com.
Further reading
- Brandon, Laura (2021). War Art in Canada: A Critical History. Toronto: Art Canada Institute. ISBN 978-1-4871-0271-5.
- Potolsky, Matthew (2019). The National Security Sublime: On the Aesthetics of Government Secrecy. United Kingdom: Taylor & Francis. ISBN 978-0-4295-5898-6.
- Brook, Pete (13 June 2013). "Declassified Spy Outpost Lurks on the Dark Side of the Earth". Wired. Archived from the original on 15 June 2013. Retrieved 21 May 2025.