NICOLAS SASSOON

Nicolas Sassoon, INDEX AVENUE SKYLIGHT, exhibition view at Wil Aballe Art Projects, Vancouver 2018

Nicolas Sassoon, SKYLIGHT (thumbnail), 2017
Click here for full animation

Nicolas Sassoon, AVENUE (thumbnail), 2017
Click here for full animation

Nicolas Sassoon, INDEX (thumbnail), 2017
Click here for full animation

Nicolas Sassoon’s INDEX, AVENUE and SKYLIGHT are 3 monumental digital animations exceeding vastly the size of common screens, inviting viewers to scroll within their web browser to uncover the entire works. Each animation was created as a subjective record of an underground artist-run space from Vancouver BC Canada, which operated from 2014 to 2016. At large, the project uses idiomatic visual elements from Sassoon’s practice to evoke the culture and communities surrounding these venues: pixelated patterns, digital moirés, isometric perspective and a monochromatic palette are used to render a multitude of details, furniture, textures, and fantastical figures. Each animation is “drawn” from memory; portraying the venues through a process of recollection and imagination, a combination of accurate and imaginary elements. INDEX, AVENUE and SKYLIGHT manifest chaotic environments looking dated, idealized and ethereal. Each space appears floating in space, void of human presence and seemingly charged with a form of energy.

The Prophets is an on-going series of sculptures as poetic interfaces between computer technology and geological forces. Composed of small pumice boulders (volcanic rock) connected to LCD panels, the sculptures recall traditional viewing stones (Gongshi, Suiseki) from which electronic hardware and screens emerge to form heads and figures. The LCD screens feature pixelated animations evocative of flowing lava, suggesting a magmatic life silently contained within the stones. In The Prophets, technology becomes a vessel through which inert rocks appear to express another state of existence – a volcanic unrest hinting back at their chaotic origins. The sculptures bring about a singular experience, recounting a partial history of our relation with matter – a speculative geology of our digital condition rooted in volcanological processes, and speaking to the connections between organic and inorganic materials.

SIGNALS, Nicolas Sassoon & Rick Silva, exhibition at Wil Aballe Art Projects, Vancouver, 2016

SIGNALS, Nicolas Sassoon & Rick Silva, exhibition at 150 Media Stream, Chicago, curated by Yuge Zhou, 2019/2020

SIGNALS 4, Nicolas Sassoon & Rick Silva, Computer generated animation, 6 minutes, loop, 2017

SIGNALS is a collaborative project between artists Nicolas Sassoon and Rick Silva (Eugene, OR, USA) focusing on immersive audio-visual renderings of altered seascapes. Sassoon and Silva share an on-going theme in their individual practices: the depiction of wilderness and natural forms through computer imaging. Created by merging their respective fields of visual research, SIGNALS features oceanic panoramas inhabited by unnatural substances and enigmatic structures. The project draws from sources such as oceanographic surveys, climate studies and science-fiction to create 3D generated video works and installations that reflect on contamination, mutation and future ecologies. SIGNALS has been exhibited at 150 Media Stream in Chicago, the Chronus Art Center in Shanghai, House of Electronic Art in Basel, the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, Wil Aballe Art Projects in Vancouver, Interstitial Theatre in Seattle, Villa Beatrix Enea in Anglet, France, Resonate Festival in Belgrade and GLAS Festival in Berkeley.

ISLANDS, with WALLPAPERS (Sara Ludy, Sylvain Sailly)
Exhibition Beyond the Trees: WALLPAPERS in Conversation with Emily Carr, Vancouver Art Gallery, curated by Diana Freundl & Caitlin Jones, Vancouver 2015

ISLANDS & ARCHES, with WALLPAPERS (Sara Ludy, Sylvain Sailly)
Exhibition Beyond the Trees: WALLPAPERS in Conversation with Emily Carr, Vancouver Art Gallery, curated by Diana Freundl & Caitlin Jones, Vancouver 2015

SOUND & BLINDS, with WALLPAPERS (Sara Ludy, Sylvain Sailly)
Exhibition Beyond the Trees: WALLPAPERS in Conversation with Emily Carr, Vancouver Art Gallery, curated by Diana Freundl & Caitlin Jones, Vancouver 2015

WALLPAPERS is a collaborative project founded in 2011 by Nicolas Sassoon, Sara Ludy and Sylvain Sailly. WALLPAPERS exists under two specific contexts; exhibited online at w-a-l-l-p-a-p-e-r-s.net and manifesting in space through exhibitions and events. WALLPAPERS online exists as a catalogue of digital patterns created by each artist. Each digital pattern from the catalogue is displayed full-screen on its own URL. WALLPAPERS offline takes form as site-specific installations comprised primarily of large-scale video-projections. The site-specific installations employ digital patterns and project them in space at a larger scale, producing environments adjusted to the architecture in context. WALLPAPERS refers to traditional wallpapers applied to walls as well as digital wallpapers applied to computer desktop backgrounds. By extension, the project also refers to pattern-making for the creation of traditional and digital wallpapers. At large, WALLPAPERS refers to a wide range of imageries and formats, equally drawn from the history of computer graphics as from the artist’s on-going inquiries. WALLPAPERS as a collaborative project embodies a multiplicity of approaches by displaying an array of artistic inquiries on the wallpaper format in the digital age. The artworks exhibited through WALLPAPERS hold ties to traditional methods of pattern-making while also being art forms adjusted to a modern context of art production and dissemination.

Nicolas Sassoon
MANSIONS
3D models, concrete castings, aquariums, LEDs, aluminum – variable dimensions 2013

Exhibition DREAM HOMES at Wil Aballe Art Projects, Vancouver, BC, 2015

Photos courtesy of Dennis Ha