Signature: Art Institute of Chicago
Artist: David K. Ross
Work ID: 85140
Description: Signature is a photography project which captures the visible qualities of expelled vapour released by HVAC systems (Heating Ventilation & Air Conditioning) of various art institutions and art conservation sites.
The project proposes a particular link between the interior activities of art institutions and the exterior exhaust that is a signature of these processes. The photographs capture the vapour in which trace elements of art works are ‘breathed’ out of a building on a daily basis. While acknowledging the discreet physicality of unique objects, Signature also recognizes the evanescent and ultimately unstable nature of art works. Over time, particles from all art works in a given collection disappear and collapse together on a nanoscopic level. Their particulate residue is then evacuated by the very building which protects them.
In creating a body of work focused on the elusive cloudy mass that rises from such institutions, Signature obliquely references the historic interest that artists have had in clouds, mist, steam, and smoke as subject matter for their works. Representing one of the most fugitive, dynamic, and possibly destructive of substances, the idea of ‘visible air’ has moved along a symbolic trajectory that connects the picturesque to the sublime to the tragic—from Ruskin to Turner to Stieglitz and beyond.
Measurements: 93.98 x 114.3 cm
Collection:
Date Made: 2012
Materials: photograph: inkjet print
Virtual Collection: Original CCCA
Work by David K. Ross
Horologica
Artist: David K. Ross
Work ID: 85207
Description: Selection of nine drawings from series of 60.
Providing a view into the past and future of imaging technologies, these drawings depict an object as it spins through various axes. Loosely based on the zoetrope — a proto-cinematic device for watching animated drawings — but frequently resembling a stylized telecommunications satellite, the images oscillate with each rotation, with each view.
Measurements: 22 x 24 cm each/chacun
Collection:
Date Made: 1997
Materials: Graphite on paper, velum
Virtual Collection: Original CCCA
Horologica
Artist: David K. Ross
Work ID: 85206
Description: Installation view Dazibao gallery, Montreal 2015.
Providing a view into the past and future of imaging technologies, these drawings depict an object as it spins through various axes. Loosely based on the zoetrope — a proto-cinematic device for watching animated drawings — but frequently resembling a stylized telecommunications satellite, the images oscillate with each rotation, with each view.
Measurements:
Collection:
Date Made: 1997
Materials:
Virtual Collection: Original CCCA
Horologica: Thursday, 5:00pm
Artist: David K. Ross
Work ID: 85208
Description: Providing a view into the past and future of imaging technologies, these drawings depict an object as it spins through various axes. Loosely based on the zoetrope — a proto-cinematic device for watching animated drawings — but frequently resembling a stylized telecommunications satellite, the images oscillate with each rotation, with each view.
Measurements: 22 x 24 cm each/chacun
Collection:
Date Made: 1997
Materials: Graphite on paper, velum
Virtual Collection: Original CCCA
Pomme de Parterre
Artist: David K. Ross
Work ID: 85124
Description: Interior view of sunken shed that held a sonic potato chorus. A 360 degree sonic tour of the project is available via the Jardin de Métis website.
Photos: Michel Laverdière (Jardins de Métis)
Measurements:
Collection:
Date Made: 2007
Materials: installation
Virtual Collection: Original CCCA
Dark Rooms: Museé d’art de Joliette: 19,800 seconds
Artist: David K. Ross
Work ID: 85210
Description: In this series, photographs are made in the near-complete darkness of storage areas belonging to artists and public art galleries. Photographs are executed behind closed doors, utilizing only existing light that leaks into locations where objects are stored. The project relies on extremely long exposure times—up to multiple days in length—to produce images that are not only documents of space, but also records of the passage of time and the very slow accumulation of light onto film.
Measurements: 112 x 140 cm
Collection:
Date Made: 2007
Materials: Inkjet on rag
Virtual Collection: Original CCCA
Pomme de Parterre
Artist: David K. Ross
Work ID: 85121
Description: Section view of Pomme de parterre.
Pomme de parterre was a joint project for the International Garden Festival at the Jardin de Métis, realized by MoiMoi Design’s Angela Iarocci and Claire Ironside and David K. Ross, with additional assistance from Peter Flemming, Garrett Pittenger and Ted Kesik. A 360 degree sonic tour of the project is available via the Jardin de Métis website.
Photos: Michel Laverdière (Jardins de Métis)
Measurements:
Collection:
Date Made: 2007
Materials: installation
Virtual Collection: Original CCCA
Pomme de Parterre
Artist: David K. Ross
Work ID: 85120
Description: Exterior view of sunken shed containing the potato battery and surrounding potato parterres.
Pomme de parterre was a joint project for the International Garden Festival at the Jardin de Métis, realized by MoiMoi Design’s Angela Iarocci and Claire Ironside and David K. Ross, with additional assistance from Peter Flemming, Garrett Pittenger and Ted Kesik. A 360 degree sonic tour of the project is available via the Jardin de Métis website.
Photos: Michel Laverdière (Jardins de Métis)
Measurements:
Collection:
Date Made: 2007
Materials: installation
Virtual Collection: Original CCCA
Dark Rooms: Thomas McIntosh/Emmanuel Madan: 691,200 seconds
Artist: David K. Ross
Work ID: 85209
Description: In this series, photographs are made in the near-complete darkness of storage areas belonging to artists and public art galleries. Photographs are executed behind closed doors, utilizing only existing light that leaks into locations where objects are stored. The project relies on extremely long exposure times—up to multiple days in length—to produce images that are not only documents of space, but also records of the passage of time and the very slow accumulation of light onto film.
Measurements: 112 x 140 cm
Collection:
Date Made: 2007
Materials: Inkjet on rag
Virtual Collection: Original CCCA
Pomme de Parterre
Artist: David K. Ross
Work ID: 85123
Description: Interior view of sunken shed that held a sonic potato chorus. A 360 degree sonic tour of the project is available via the Jardin de Métis website.
Photos: Michel Laverdière (Jardins de Métis)
Measurements:
Collection:
Date Made: 2007
Materials: installation
Virtual Collection: Original CCCA
Dark Rooms: Spring Hurlbut: 23,400 seconds
Artist: David K. Ross
Work ID: 85211
Description: In this series, photographs are made in the near-complete darkness of storage areas belonging to artists and public art galleries. Photographs are executed behind closed doors, utilizing only existing light that leaks into locations where objects are stored. The project relies on extremely long exposure times—up to multiple days in length—to produce images that are not only documents of space, but also records of the passage of time and the very slow accumulation of light onto film.
Measurements: 140 x 112 cm
Collection:
Date Made: 2007
Materials: Inkjet on rag
Virtual Collection: Original CCCA
Pomme de Parterre
Artist: David K. Ross
Work ID: 85122
Description: Interior view of sunken shed that held a sonic potato chorus. A 360 degree sonic tour of the project is available via the Jardin de Métis website.
Photos: Michel Laverdière (Jardins de Métis)
Measurements:
Collection:
Date Made: 2007
Materials: installation
Virtual Collection: Original CCCA
Pomme de Parterre
Artist: David K. Ross
Work ID: 85119
Description: An aerial view of Pomme de parterre showing the sunken shed and surrounding parterres.
Pomme de parterre was a joint project for the International Garden Festival at the Jardin de Métis, realized by MoiMoi Design’s Angela Iarocci and Claire Ironside and David K. Ross, with additional assistance from Peter Flemming, Garrett Pittenger and Ted Kesik. A 360 degree sonic tour of the project is available via the Jardin de Métis website.
Photos: Michel Laverdière (Jardins de Métis)
Measurements:
Collection:
Date Made: 2007
Materials: installation
Virtual Collection: Original CCCA
Dark Rooms: Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal (Vide Sanitaire): 223,200 seconds
Artist: David K. Ross
Work ID: 85212
Description: In this series, photographs are made in the near-complete darkness of storage areas belonging to artists and public art galleries. Photographs are executed behind closed doors, utilizing only existing light that leaks into locations where objects are stored. The project relies on extremely long exposure times—up to multiple days in length—to produce images that are not only documents of space, but also records of the passage of time and the very slow accumulation of light onto film.
Measurements: 112 x 140 cm
Collection:
Date Made: 2008
Materials: Inkjet on rag
Virtual Collection: Original CCCA
Dark Rooms: Arnaud Maggs: 129,600 seconds
Artist: David K. Ross
Work ID: 85217
Description: In this series, photographs are made in the near-complete darkness of storage areas belonging to artists and public art galleries. Photographs are executed behind closed doors, utilizing only existing light that leaks into locations where objects are stored. The project relies on extremely long exposure times—up to multiple days in length—to produce images that are not only documents of space, but also records of the passage of time and the very slow accumulation of light onto film.
Measurements: 112 x 140 cm
Collection:
Date Made: 2008
Materials: Inkjet on rag
Virtual Collection: Original CCCA
Reconnaissance: F1-46 (Out)
Artist: David K. Ross
Work ID: 85132
Description: Often situated at the furthest edges of exurbia, self-storage facilities frequently offer better access to pristine, sylvan swaths of untarnished terrain than do the pseudo-pastoral pre-fabs advertised in suburban housing marketing campaigns. Ironically, it is the underwanted items (rather than their owners) that end up with the best “view” of rusticatio locales. As envoys that precede (and often predict) the next conquest of land by commercial interests, self-storage facilities are engaged in a kind of reconnaissance mission inside unclaimed territory.
The paired photographic views of the units’ inside and outside spaces exist not only as points of demarcation in an uncertain landscape, but are also reminders of romantic desire. While one view describes an interior architecture to be filled with what we have, the second view describes an exterior vista of what we might want.
Measurements: 140 x 112 cm
Collection:
Date Made: 2008
Materials: photograph
Virtual Collection: Original CCCA
Dark Rooms: Musée d’art de Joliette: 1,240 seconds
Artist: David K. Ross
Work ID: 85214
Description: In this series, photographs are made in the near-complete darkness of storage areas belonging to artists and public art galleries. Photographs are executed behind closed doors, utilizing only existing light that leaks into locations where objects are stored. The project relies on extremely long exposure times—up to multiple days in length—to produce images that are not only documents of space, but also records of the passage of time and the very slow accumulation of light onto film.
Measurements: 112 x 140 cm
Collection:
Date Made: 2008
Materials: Inkjet on rag
Virtual Collection: Original CCCA
Reconnaissance: F1-46 (In)
Artist: David K. Ross
Work ID: 85133
Description: Often situated at the furthest edges of exurbia, self-storage facilities frequently offer better access to pristine, sylvan swaths of untarnished terrain than do the pseudo-pastoral pre-fabs advertised in suburban housing marketing campaigns. Ironically, it is the underwanted items (rather than their owners) that end up with the best “view” of rusticatio locales. As envoys that precede (and often predict) the next conquest of land by commercial interests, self-storage facilities are engaged in a kind of reconnaissance mission inside unclaimed territory.
The paired photographic views of the units’ inside and outside spaces exist not only as points of demarcation in an uncertain landscape, but are also reminders of romantic desire. While one view describes an interior architecture to be filled with what we have, the second view describes an exterior vista of what we might want.
Measurements: 140 x 112 cm
Collection:
Date Made: 2008
Materials: photograph
Virtual Collection: Original CCCA
Reconnaissance: C-39 (Out)
Artist: David K. Ross
Work ID: 85130
Description: Often situated at the furthest edges of exurbia, self-storage facilities frequently offer better access to pristine, sylvan swaths of untarnished terrain than do the pseudo-pastoral pre-fabs advertised in suburban housing marketing campaigns. Ironically, it is the underwanted items (rather than their owners) that end up with the best “view” of rusticatio locales. As envoys that precede (and often predict) the next conquest of land by commercial interests, self-storage facilities are engaged in a kind of reconnaissance mission inside unclaimed territory.
The paired photographic views of the units’ inside and outside spaces exist not only as points of demarcation in an uncertain landscape, but are also reminders of romantic desire. While one view describes an interior architecture to be filled with what we have, the second view describes an exterior vista of what we might want.
Measurements: 140 x 112 cm
Collection:
Date Made: 2008
Materials: photograph
Virtual Collection: Original CCCA
Dark Rooms: Musée d’art de Joliette: 12,460 seconds
Artist: David K. Ross
Work ID: 85215
Description: In this series, photographs are made in the near-complete darkness of storage areas belonging to artists and public art galleries. Photographs are executed behind closed doors, utilizing only existing light that leaks into locations where objects are stored. The project relies on extremely long exposure times—up to multiple days in length—to produce images that are not only documents of space, but also records of the passage of time and the very slow accumulation of light onto film.
Measurements: 140 x 112 cm
Collection:
Date Made: 2008
Materials: Inkjet on rag
Virtual Collection: Original CCCA
Dark Rooms: Martha Fleming/Lyne Lapointe: 50,400 seconds
Artist: David K. Ross
Work ID: 85216
Description: In this series, photographs are made in the near-complete darkness of storage areas belonging to artists and public art galleries. Photographs are executed behind closed doors, utilizing only existing light that leaks into locations where objects are stored. The project relies on extremely long exposure times—up to multiple days in length—to produce images that are not only documents of space, but also records of the passage of time and the very slow accumulation of light onto film.
Measurements: 112 x 140 cm
Collection:
Date Made: 2008
Materials: Inkjet on rag
Virtual Collection: Original CCCA
Reconnaissance: C-39 (In)
Artist: David K. Ross
Work ID: 85131
Description: Often situated at the furthest edges of exurbia, self-storage facilities frequently offer better access to pristine, sylvan swaths of untarnished terrain than do the pseudo-pastoral pre-fabs advertised in suburban housing marketing campaigns. Ironically, it is the underwanted items (rather than their owners) that end up with the best “view” of rusticatio locales. As envoys that precede (and often predict) the next conquest of land by commercial interests, self-storage facilities are engaged in a kind of reconnaissance mission inside unclaimed territory.
The paired photographic views of the units’ inside and outside spaces exist not only as points of demarcation in an uncertain landscape, but are also reminders of romantic desire. While one view describes an interior architecture to be filled with what we have, the second view describes an exterior vista of what we might want.
Measurements: 140 x 112 cm
Collection:
Date Made: 2008
Materials: photograph
Virtual Collection: Original CCCA
Dark Rooms: Mark Dion /J. Morgan Puett: 39,600 seconds
Artist: David K. Ross
Work ID: 85213
Description: In this series, photographs are made in the near-complete darkness of storage areas belonging to artists and public art galleries. Photographs are executed behind closed doors, utilizing only existing light that leaks into locations where objects are stored. The project relies on extremely long exposure times—up to multiple days in length—to produce images that are not only documents of space, but also records of the passage of time and the very slow accumulation of light onto film.
Measurements: 112 x 140 cm
Collection:
Date Made: 2008
Materials: Inkjet on rag
Virtual Collection: Original CCCA
Signature: Musée d’art contemporian de Montréal III
Artist: David K. Ross
Work ID: 85139
Description: Signature is a photography project which captures the visible qualities of expelled vapour released by HVAC systems (Heating Ventilation & Air Conditioning) of various art institutions and art conservation sites.
The project proposes a particular link between the interior activities of art institutions and the exterior exhaust that is a signature of these processes. The photographs capture the vapour in which trace elements of art works are ‘breathed’ out of a building on a daily basis. While acknowledging the discreet physicality of unique objects, Signature also recognizes the evanescent and ultimately unstable nature of art works. Over time, particles from all art works in a given collection disappear and collapse together on a nanoscopic level. Their particulate residue is then evacuated by the very building which protects them.
In creating a body of work focused on the elusive cloudy mass that rises from such institutions, Signature obliquely references the historic interest that artists have had in clouds, mist, steam, and smoke as subject matter for their works. Representing one of the most fugitive, dynamic, and possibly destructive of substances, the idea of ‘visible air’ has moved along a symbolic trajectory that connects the picturesque to the sublime to the tragic—from Ruskin to Turner to Stieglitz and beyond.
Measurements:
Collection:
Date Made: 2009
Materials: photograph: inkjet print
Virtual Collection: Original CCCA
Signature: Art Gallery of Ontario, II
Artist: David K. Ross
Work ID: 85138
Description: Signature is a photography project which captures the visible qualities of expelled vapour released by HVAC systems (Heating Ventilation & Air Conditioning) of various art institutions and art conservation sites.
The project proposes a particular link between the interior activities of art institutions and the exterior exhaust that is a signature of these processes. The photographs capture the vapour in which trace elements of art works are ‘breathed’ out of a building on a daily basis. While acknowledging the discreet physicality of unique objects, Signature also recognizes the evanescent and ultimately unstable nature of art works. Over time, particles from all art works in a given collection disappear and collapse together on a nanoscopic level. Their particulate residue is then evacuated by the very building which protects them.
In creating a body of work focused on the elusive cloudy mass that rises from such institutions, Signature obliquely references the historic interest that artists have had in clouds, mist, steam, and smoke as subject matter for their works. Representing one of the most fugitive, dynamic, and possibly destructive of substances, the idea of ‘visible air’ has moved along a symbolic trajectory that connects the picturesque to the sublime to the tragic—from Ruskin to Turner to Stieglitz and beyond.
Measurements: 111.76 x 91.44 cm
Collection:
Date Made: 2009
Materials: photograph: inkjet print
Virtual Collection: Original CCCA
Reconnaissance: Unit 56 (In)
Artist: David K. Ross
Work ID: 85135
Description: Often situated at the furthest edges of exurbia, self-storage facilities frequently offer better access to pristine, sylvan swaths of untarnished terrain than do the pseudo-pastoral pre-fabs advertised in suburban housing marketing campaigns. Ironically, it is the underwanted items (rather than their owners) that end up with the best “view” of rusticatio locales. As envoys that precede (and often predict) the next conquest of land by commercial interests, self-storage facilities are engaged in a kind of reconnaissance mission inside unclaimed territory.
The paired photographic views of the units’ inside and outside spaces exist not only as points of demarcation in an uncertain landscape, but are also reminders of romantic desire. While one view describes an interior architecture to be filled with what we have, the second view describes an exterior vista of what we might want.
Measurements: 112 x 140 cm
Collection:
Date Made: 2009
Materials: photograph
Virtual Collection: Original CCCA
Reconnaissance: Abandoned Unit (Out)
Artist: David K. Ross
Work ID: 85136
Description: Often situated at the furthest edges of exurbia, self-storage facilities frequently offer better access to pristine, sylvan swaths of untarnished terrain than do the pseudo-pastoral pre-fabs advertised in suburban housing marketing campaigns. Ironically, it is the underwanted items (rather than their owners) that end up with the best “view” of rusticatio locales. As envoys that precede (and often predict) the next conquest of land by commercial interests, self-storage facilities are engaged in a kind of reconnaissance mission inside unclaimed territory.
The paired photographic views of the units’ inside and outside spaces exist not only as points of demarcation in an uncertain landscape, but are also reminders of romantic desire. While one view describes an interior architecture to be filled with what we have, the second view describes an exterior vista of what we might want.
Measurements: 112 x 140 cm
Collection:
Date Made: 2009
Materials: photograph
Virtual Collection: Original CCCA
Reconnaissance: Abandoned Unit (In)
Artist: David K. Ross
Work ID: 85137
Description: Often situated at the furthest edges of exurbia, self-storage facilities frequently offer better access to pristine, sylvan swaths of untarnished terrain than do the pseudo-pastoral pre-fabs advertised in suburban housing marketing campaigns. Ironically, it is the underwanted items (rather than their owners) that end up with the best “view” of rusticatio locales. As envoys that precede (and often predict) the next conquest of land by commercial interests, self-storage facilities are engaged in a kind of reconnaissance mission inside unclaimed territory.
The paired photographic views of the units’ inside and outside spaces exist not only as points of demarcation in an uncertain landscape, but are also reminders of romantic desire. While one view describes an interior architecture to be filled with what we have, the second view describes an exterior vista of what we might want.
Measurements: 112 x 140 cm
Collection:
Date Made: 2009
Materials: photograph
Virtual Collection: Original CCCA
Reconnaissance: Unit 56 (Out)
Artist: David K. Ross
Work ID: 85134
Description: Often situated at the furthest edges of exurbia, self-storage facilities frequently offer better access to pristine, sylvan swaths of untarnished terrain than do the pseudo-pastoral pre-fabs advertised in suburban housing marketing campaigns. Ironically, it is the underwanted items (rather than their owners) that end up with the best “view” of rusticatio locales. As envoys that precede (and often predict) the next conquest of land by commercial interests, self-storage facilities are engaged in a kind of reconnaissance mission inside unclaimed territory.
The paired photographic views of the units’ inside and outside spaces exist not only as points of demarcation in an uncertain landscape, but are also reminders of romantic desire. While one view describes an interior architecture to be filled with what we have, the second view describes an exterior vista of what we might want.
Measurements: 112 x 140 cm
Collection:
Date Made: 2009
Materials: photograph
Virtual Collection: Original CCCA
Attaché: MNBAQ, installation view, Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal
Artist: David K. Ross
Work ID: 85147
Description: Since the 1960s, public art galleries in Canada have been using a colour-coded system to distinguish institutional art transportation crates. Whether crates are in transit, on a loading dock, inside an art transport truck, or in a warehouse, the twenty-two designated colours assigned within this system allow gallery staff in every province to quickly identify an artwork’s home institution.
The Attaché project produced large format, macro images of crates from various galleries across Canada. Printed on stretched, unframed canvas, these colour photographs of paint on plywood reference abstract paintings of the 1960s with their vast expanses of colour, precise surface detail, and attention to format. Through the merging of painterly and photographic traditions the Attaché project thus utilized a language developed for transport logistics and in the process merged two accidentally parallel events: the ascendancy of Colour Field painting and the implementation of a coloured crate identification system.
Measurements:
Collection:
Date Made: 2010
Materials: Latex print on canvas
Virtual Collection: Original CCCA
Drafting
Artist: David K. Ross
Work ID: 85173
Description: A David K. Ross project commissioned by the Musée des beaux-arts de Sherbrooke as part of the exhibition Insertion. Contamination. Dispersion.
Drafting is a site-specific video installation that references and represents the mechanics of conditioned, moving air inside the Musée des beaux-arts de Sherbrooke. The video was both made and is displayed within the typically "off-limits" air conditioning control centre that monitors air circulation systems inside the Musée. The looped video depicts the pages of the institution's own architectural HVAC drawings apparently being moved by air currents activated through the same mechanical systems which the drawings themselves depict.
Measurements:
Collection:
Date Made: 2010
Materials: Installation view inside HVAC control room at MBAS
Virtual Collection: Original CCCA
Drafting
Artist: David K. Ross
Work ID: 85175
Description: A David K. Ross project commissioned by the Musée des beaux-arts de Sherbrooke as part of the exhibition Insertion. Contamination. Dispersion.
Drafting is a site-specific video installation that references and represents the mechanics of conditioned, moving air inside the Musée des beaux-arts de Sherbrooke. The video was both made and is displayed within the typically "off-limits" air conditioning control centre that monitors air circulation systems inside the Musée. The looped video depicts the pages of the institution's own architectural HVAC drawings apparently being moved by air currents activated through the same mechanical systems which the drawings themselves depict.
Measurements: HD video 2:34 sec.
Collection:
Date Made: 2010
Materials: video still
Virtual Collection: Original CCCA
![396 x 534 x 762, [Installation view, Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal]](https://ccca.art/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/ross054.jpg)
396 x 534 x 762, [Installation view, Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal]
Artist: David K. Ross
Work ID: 85152
Description: The opening frames of 396 x 534 x 762 show installation technicians placing eight shipping crates on an open platform located within a gallery at the Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal. Gradually, workers arrive to frame, drywall, plaster, and paint walls that eventually surround the platform entirely, effectively sealing in the crates within a fully enclosed structure whose contents are invisible to gallery-goers.
As the final part of the structure is completed in the film, viewers realize that the wall they have just seen constructed in the film is the one onto which images are now being projected.
Measurements:
Collection:
Date Made: 2010
Materials: installation
Virtual Collection: Original CCCA
Alhazen’s Problem
Artist: David K. Ross
Work ID: 85158
Description: Alhazen’s Problem used a wide gamut of optical technologies — the camera obscura, remote video surveillance, large format photography, and web-based geomatics — to connect two proximal sites in Portland, Maine (The Institute of Contemporary Art at MECA and the Portland Children's Museum), with a third remote site: Basra, Iraq.
Measurements:
Collection:
Date Made: 2010
Materials: Detail showing Umm-al-Girih window pattern
Virtual Collection: Original CCCA
Drafting
Artist: David K. Ross
Work ID: 85176
Description: A David K. Ross project commissioned by the Musée des beaux-arts de Sherbrooke as part of the exhibition Insertion. Contamination. Dispersion.
Drafting is a site-specific video installation that references and represents the mechanics of conditioned, moving air inside the Musée des beaux-arts de Sherbrooke. The video was both made and is displayed within the typically "off-limits" air conditioning control centre that monitors air circulation systems inside the Musée. The looped video depicts the pages of the institution's own architectural HVAC drawings apparently being moved by air currents activated through the same mechanical systems which the drawings themselves depict.
Measurements: HD video 2:34 sec.
Collection:
Date Made: 2010
Materials: video still
Virtual Collection: Original CCCA
Attaché: Installation view, Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal
Artist: David K. Ross
Work ID: 85144
Description: Since the 1960s, public art galleries in Canada have been using a colour-coded system to distinguish institutional art transportation crates. Whether crates are in transit, on a loading dock, inside an art transport truck, or in a warehouse, the twenty-two designated colours assigned within this system allow gallery staff in every province to quickly identify an artwork’s home institution.
The Attaché project produced large format, macro images of crates from various galleries across Canada. Printed on stretched, unframed canvas, these colour photographs of paint on plywood reference abstract paintings of the 1960s with their vast expanses of colour, precise surface detail, and attention to format. Through the merging of painterly and photographic traditions the Attaché project thus utilized a language developed for transport logistics and in the process merged two accidentally parallel events: the ascendancy of Colour Field painting and the implementation of a coloured crate identification system.
Measurements: 160 x 297 x 8 cm
Collection:
Date Made: 2010
Materials: Latex print on canvas
Virtual Collection: Original CCCA
Alhazen’s Problem
Artist: David K. Ross
Work ID: 85155
Description: Alhazen’s Problem used a wide gamut of optical technologies — the camera obscura, remote video surveillance, large format photography, and web-based geomatics — to connect two proximal sites in Portland, Maine (The Institute of Contemporary Art at MECA and the Portland Children's Museum), with a third remote site: Basra, Iraq.
Measurements:
Collection:
Date Made: 2010
Virtual Collection: Original CCCA
Attaché: MBAO/AGO, Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal
Artist: David K. Ross
Work ID: 85146
Description: Since the 1960s, public art galleries in Canada have been using a colour-coded system to distinguish institutional art transportation crates. Whether crates are in transit, on a loading dock, inside an art transport truck, or in a warehouse, the twenty-two designated colours assigned within this system allow gallery staff in every province to quickly identify an artwork’s home institution.
The Attaché project produced large format, macro images of crates from various galleries across Canada. Printed on stretched, unframed canvas, these colour photographs of paint on plywood reference abstract paintings of the 1960s with their vast expanses of colour, precise surface detail, and attention to format. Through the merging of painterly and photographic traditions the Attaché project thus utilized a language developed for transport logistics and in the process merged two accidentally parallel events: the ascendancy of Colour Field painting and the implementation of a coloured crate identification system.
Measurements: 234 x 221 x 8 cm
Collection:
Date Made: 2010
Materials: Latex print on canvas
Virtual Collection: Original CCCA
Alhazen’s Problem
Artist: David K. Ross
Work ID: 85160
Description: Alhazen’s Problem used a wide gamut of optical technologies — the camera obscura, remote video surveillance, large format photography, and web-based geomatics — to connect two proximal sites in Portland, Maine (The Institute of Contemporary Art at MECA and the Portland Children's Museum), with a third remote site: Basra, Iraq.
Measurements: 183 x 183 cm
Collection:
Date Made: 2010
Materials: inkjet print
Virtual Collection: Original CCCA
Attaché: Installation view, Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal
Artist: David K. Ross
Work ID: 85145
Description: Since the 1960s, public art galleries in Canada have been using a colour-coded system to distinguish institutional art transportation crates. Whether crates are in transit, on a loading dock, inside an art transport truck, or in a warehouse, the twenty-two designated colours assigned within this system allow gallery staff in every province to quickly identify an artwork’s home institution.
The Attaché project produced large format, macro images of crates from various galleries across Canada. Printed on stretched, unframed canvas, these colour photographs of paint on plywood reference abstract paintings of the 1960s with their vast expanses of colour, precise surface detail, and attention to format. Through the merging of painterly and photographic traditions the Attaché project thus utilized a language developed for transport logistics and in the process merged two accidentally parallel events: the ascendancy of Colour Field painting and the implementation of a coloured crate identification system.
Measurements:
Collection:
Date Made: 2010
Materials: Latex print on canvas
Virtual Collection: Original CCCA
Attaché: MACM, avant 1989, detail
Artist: David K. Ross
Work ID: 85149
Description: Since the 1960s, public art galleries in Canada have been using a colour-coded system to distinguish institutional art transportation crates. Whether crates are in transit, on a loading dock, inside an art transport truck, or in a warehouse, the twenty-two designated colours assigned within this system allow gallery staff in every province to quickly identify an artwork’s home institution.
The Attaché project produced large format, macro images of crates from various galleries across Canada. Printed on stretched, unframed canvas, these colour photographs of paint on plywood reference abstract paintings of the 1960s with their vast expanses of colour, precise surface detail, and attention to format. Through the merging of painterly and photographic traditions the Attaché project thus utilized a language developed for transport logistics and in the process merged two accidentally parallel events: the ascendancy of Colour Field painting and the implementation of a coloured crate identification system.
Measurements:
Collection:
Date Made: 2010
Materials: Latex print on canvas
Virtual Collection: Original CCCA
![396 x 534 x 762, [Installation view, Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal]](https://ccca.art/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/ross055.jpg)
396 x 534 x 762, [Installation view, Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal]
Artist: David K. Ross
Work ID: 85151
Description: The opening frames of 396 x 534 x 762 show installation technicians placing eight shipping crates on an open platform located within a gallery at the Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal. Gradually, workers arrive to frame, drywall, plaster, and paint walls that eventually surround the platform entirely, effectively sealing in the crates within a fully enclosed structure whose contents are invisible to gallery-goers.
As the final part of the structure is completed in the film, viewers realize that the wall they have just seen constructed in the film is the one onto which images are now being projected.
Measurements:
Collection:
Date Made: 2010
Materials: installation
Virtual Collection: Original CCCA
![396 x 534 x 762, [Installation view, Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal]](https://ccca.art/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/ross056.jpg)
396 x 534 x 762, [Installation view, Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal]
Artist: David K. Ross
Work ID: 85150
Description: The opening frames of 396 x 534 x 762 show installation technicians placing eight shipping crates on an open platform located within a gallery at the Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal. Gradually, workers arrive to frame, drywall, plaster, and paint walls that eventually surround the platform entirely, effectively sealing in the crates within a fully enclosed structure whose contents are invisible to gallery-goers.
As the final part of the structure is completed in the film, viewers realize that the wall they have just seen constructed in the film is the one onto which images are now being projected.
Measurements:
Collection:
Date Made: 2010
Materials: installation
Virtual Collection: Original CCCA
Drafting
Artist: David K. Ross
Work ID: 85172
Description: A David K. Ross project commissioned by the Musée des beaux-arts de Sherbrooke as part of the exhibition Insertion. Contamination. Dispersion.
Drafting is a site-specific video installation that references and represents the mechanics of conditioned, moving air inside the Musée des beaux-arts de Sherbrooke. The video was both made and is displayed within the typically "off-limits" air conditioning control centre that monitors air circulation systems inside the Musée. The looped video depicts the pages of the institution's own architectural HVAC drawings apparently being moved by air currents activated through the same mechanical systems which the drawings themselves depict.
Measurements:
Collection:
Date Made: 2010
Materials: Installation view inside HVAC control room at MBAS
Virtual Collection: Original CCCA
Drafting
Artist: David K. Ross
Work ID: 85174
Description: A David K. Ross project commissioned by the Musée des beaux-arts de Sherbrooke as part of the exhibition Insertion. Contamination. Dispersion.
Drafting is a site-specific video installation that references and represents the mechanics of conditioned, moving air inside the Musée des beaux-arts de Sherbrooke. The video was both made and is displayed within the typically "off-limits" air conditioning control centre that monitors air circulation systems inside the Musée. The looped video depicts the pages of the institution's own architectural HVAC drawings apparently being moved by air currents activated through the same mechanical systems which the drawings themselves depict.
Measurements: HD video 2:34 sec.
Collection:
Date Made: 2010
Materials: video still
Virtual Collection: Original CCCA
Alhazen’s Problem
Artist: David K. Ross
Work ID: 85159
Description: Alhazen’s Problem used a wide gamut of optical technologies — the camera obscura, remote video surveillance, large format photography, and web-based geomatics — to connect two proximal sites in Portland, Maine (The Institute of Contemporary Art at MECA and the Portland Children's Museum), with a third remote site: Basra, Iraq.
Measurements:
Collection:
Date Made: 2010
Virtual Collection: Original CCCA
Alhazen’s Problem
Artist: David K. Ross
Work ID: 85157
Description: Alhazen’s Problem used a wide gamut of optical technologies — the camera obscura, remote video surveillance, large format photography, and web-based geomatics — to connect two proximal sites in Portland, Maine (The Institute of Contemporary Art at MECA and the Portland Children's Museum), with a third remote site: Basra, Iraq.
Measurements:
Collection:
Date Made: 2010
Materials: Installation view showing data projector and Umm-al-Girih window pattern with street-level oculus.
Virtual Collection: Original CCCA
Alhazen’s Problem
Artist: David K. Ross
Work ID: 85154
Description: Alhazen’s Problem used a wide gamut of optical technologies — the camera obscura, remote video surveillance, large format photography, and web-based geomatics — to connect two proximal sites in Portland, Maine (The Institute of Contemporary Art at MECA and the Portland Children's Museum), with a third remote site: Basra, Iraq.
Measurements:
Collection:
Date Made: 2010
Materials: View to Basra Iraq (Mercator Projection), detail
Virtual Collection: Original CCCA
396 x 534 x 762
Artist: David K. Ross
Work ID: 85153
Description: The opening frames of 396 x 534 x 762 show installation technicians placing eight shipping crates on an open platform located within a gallery at the Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal. Gradually, workers arrive to frame, drywall, plaster, and paint walls that eventually surround the platform entirely, effectively sealing in the crates within a fully enclosed structure whose contents are invisible to gallery-goers.
As the final part of the structure is completed in the film, viewers realize that the wall they have just seen constructed in the film is the one onto which images are now being projected.
Measurements: 16mm transfered to HD, 3:45 mins. Silent
Collection:
Date Made: 2010
Materials: production still
Virtual Collection: Original CCCA
Attaché: MBAM/MMFA, installation view
Artist: David K. Ross
Work ID: 85148
Description: Since the 1960s, public art galleries in Canada have been using a colour-coded system to distinguish institutional art transportation crates. Whether crates are in transit, on a loading dock, inside an art transport truck, or in a warehouse, the twenty-two designated colours assigned within this system allow gallery staff in every province to quickly identify an artwork’s home institution.
The Attaché project produced large format, macro images of crates from various galleries across Canada. Printed on stretched, unframed canvas, these colour photographs of paint on plywood reference abstract paintings of the 1960s with their vast expanses of colour, precise surface detail, and attention to format. Through the merging of painterly and photographic traditions the Attaché project thus utilized a language developed for transport logistics and in the process merged two accidentally parallel events: the ascendancy of Colour Field painting and the implementation of a coloured crate identification system.
Measurements: 224 x 170 x 8 cm
Collection:
Date Made: 2010
Materials: Latex print on canvas
Virtual Collection: Original CCCA
Trailer
Artist: David K. Ross
Work ID: 85169
Description: The same duration as a standard promotional film trailer (two and a half minutes), Trailer documents the mechanical and support systems that are present at most large film productions.
Measurements: s16mm transferred to HD, 2:30 mins, silent
Collection:
Date Made: 2012
Materials: video still
Virtual Collection: Original CCCA
Gravures (1995-1996)
Artist: David K. Ross
Work ID: 85225
Description: Each of the images in this series are taken from one of the eleven livres d'or (guest books) which have been used by Montreal's artist-run galerie B-312 to hold signatures and visitors' comments over the past twenty years. Barely visible in many of these images are the "gravures," or impressions left by visitor signatures and comments as well as the faint outline of announcement cards which have been intermittently affixed to the books' pages. All images are printed at double their original size and dibond aluminum mounted.
Measurements:
Collection:
Date Made: 2012
Materials: photograph
Virtual Collection: Original CCCA
Signature: Art Institute of Chicago
Artist: David K. Ross
Work ID: 85140
Description: Signature is a photography project which captures the visible qualities of expelled vapour released by HVAC systems (Heating Ventilation & Air Conditioning) of various art institutions and art conservation sites.
The project proposes a particular link between the interior activities of art institutions and the exterior exhaust that is a signature of these processes. The photographs capture the vapour in which trace elements of art works are ‘breathed’ out of a building on a daily basis. While acknowledging the discreet physicality of unique objects, Signature also recognizes the evanescent and ultimately unstable nature of art works. Over time, particles from all art works in a given collection disappear and collapse together on a nanoscopic level. Their particulate residue is then evacuated by the very building which protects them.
In creating a body of work focused on the elusive cloudy mass that rises from such institutions, Signature obliquely references the historic interest that artists have had in clouds, mist, steam, and smoke as subject matter for their works. Representing one of the most fugitive, dynamic, and possibly destructive of substances, the idea of ‘visible air’ has moved along a symbolic trajectory that connects the picturesque to the sublime to the tragic—from Ruskin to Turner to Stieglitz and beyond.
Measurements: 93.98 x 114.3 cm
Collection:
Date Made: 2012
Materials: photograph: inkjet print
Virtual Collection: Original CCCA
Gravures (1995-1996)
Artist: David K. Ross
Work ID: 85224
Description: Each of the images in this series are taken from one of the eleven livres d'or (guest books) which have been used by Montreal's artist-run galerie B-312 to hold signatures and visitors' comments over the past twenty years. Barely visible in many of these images are the "gravures," or impressions left by visitor signatures and comments as well as the faint outline of announcement cards which have been intermittently affixed to the books' pages. All images are printed at double their original size and dibond aluminum mounted.
Measurements:
Collection:
Date Made: 2012
Materials: photograph
Virtual Collection: Original CCCA
Le Phare
Artist: David K. Ross
Work ID: 85165
Description: Unlike the Eiffel Tower or the Empire State Building, Montreal's iconic urban landmark is horizontal and spectral, not vertical and solid. Le phare is a filmic portrait of this nocturnal marker, a spinning beacon that has been raking four long beams of light across the city's environs since 1972. The nightly presence of the beacon's intense, rotating rays is reassuring for many, and yet also oddly perplexing: the illuminating machine does not provide reconnoitring for aviation; it is not synched to act as a time-keeping device; nor does it commemorate a specific historic moment or personage. Indeed, the lights have no practical function or particular memorializing role whatsoever. The beacon serves only as an evanescent, immaterial monument to itself.
Measurements: 16mm transferred to DCP/ProRes, 13:20 mins
Collection:
Date Made: 2012
Materials: Film still
Virtual Collection: Original CCCA
Le Phare
Artist: David K. Ross
Work ID: 85161
Description: Unlike the Eiffel Tower or the Empire State Building, Montreal's iconic urban landmark is horizontal and spectral, not vertical and solid. Le phare is a filmic portrait of this nocturnal marker, a spinning beacon that has been raking four long beams of light across the city's environs since 1972. The nightly presence of the beacon's intense, rotating rays is reassuring for many, and yet also oddly perplexing: the illuminating machine does not provide reconnoitring for aviation; it is not synched to act as a time-keeping device; nor does it commemorate a specific historic moment or personage. Indeed, the lights have no practical function or particular memorializing role whatsoever. The beacon serves only as an evanescent, immaterial monument to itself.
Measurements: 16mm transferred to DCP/ProRes, 13:20 mins
Collection:
Date Made: 2012
Materials: Film still
Virtual Collection: Original CCCA
Le Phare
Artist: David K. Ross
Work ID: 85163
Description: Unlike the Eiffel Tower or the Empire State Building, Montreal's iconic urban landmark is horizontal and spectral, not vertical and solid. Le phare is a filmic portrait of this nocturnal marker, a spinning beacon that has been raking four long beams of light across the city's environs since 1972. The nightly presence of the beacon's intense, rotating rays is reassuring for many, and yet also oddly perplexing: the illuminating machine does not provide reconnoitring for aviation; it is not synched to act as a time-keeping device; nor does it commemorate a specific historic moment or personage. Indeed, the lights have no practical function or particular memorializing role whatsoever. The beacon serves only as an evanescent, immaterial monument to itself.
Measurements: 16mm transferred to DCP/ProRes, 13:20 mins
Collection:
Date Made: 2012
Materials: Film still
Virtual Collection: Original CCCA
![Gravures: [Installation view, galerie B-312, Montreal]](https://ccca.art/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/ross072.jpg)
Gravures: [Installation view, galerie B-312, Montreal]
Artist: David K. Ross
Work ID: 85223
Description: Each of the images in this series are taken from one of the eleven livres d'or (guest books) which have been used by Montreal's artist-run galerie B-312 to hold signatures and visitors' comments over the past twenty years. Barely visible in many of these images are the "gravures," or impressions left by visitor signatures and comments as well as the faint outline of announcement cards which have been intermittently affixed to the books' pages. All images are printed at double their original size and dibond aluminum mounted.
Measurements:
Collection:
Date Made: 2012
Materials: photograph
Virtual Collection: Original CCCA
Trailer
Artist: David K. Ross
Work ID: 85167
Description: The same duration as a standard promotional film trailer (two and a half minutes), Trailer documents the mechanical and support systems that are present at most large film productions.
Measurements: s16mm transferred to HD, 2:30 mins, silent
Collection:
Date Made: 2012
Materials: video still
Virtual Collection: Original CCCA
Gravures (1997-1998)
Artist: David K. Ross
Work ID: 85226
Description: Each of the images in this series are taken from one of the eleven livres d'or (guest books) which have been used by Montreal's artist-run galerie B-312 to hold signatures and visitors' comments over the past twenty years. Barely visible in many of these images are the "gravures," or impressions left by visitor signatures and comments as well as the faint outline of announcement cards which have been intermittently affixed to the books' pages. All images are printed at double their original size and dibond aluminum mounted.
Measurements:
Collection:
Date Made: 2012
Materials: photograph
Virtual Collection: Original CCCA
Le Phare
Artist: David K. Ross
Work ID: 85162
Description: Unlike the Eiffel Tower or the Empire State Building, Montreal's iconic urban landmark is horizontal and spectral, not vertical and solid. Le phare is a filmic portrait of this nocturnal marker, a spinning beacon that has been raking four long beams of light across the city's environs since 1972. The nightly presence of the beacon's intense, rotating rays is reassuring for many, and yet also oddly perplexing: the illuminating machine does not provide reconnoitring for aviation; it is not synched to act as a time-keeping device; nor does it commemorate a specific historic moment or personage. Indeed, the lights have no practical function or particular memorializing role whatsoever. The beacon serves only as an evanescent, immaterial monument to itself.
Measurements: 16mm transferred to DCP/ProRes, 13:20 mins
Collection:
Date Made: 2012
Materials: Film still
Virtual Collection: Original CCCA
Le Phare
Artist: David K. Ross
Work ID: 85166
Description: Unlike the Eiffel Tower or the Empire State Building, Montreal's iconic urban landmark is horizontal and spectral, not vertical and solid. Le phare is a filmic portrait of this nocturnal marker, a spinning beacon that has been raking four long beams of light across the city's environs since 1972. The nightly presence of the beacon's intense, rotating rays is reassuring for many, and yet also oddly perplexing: the illuminating machine does not provide reconnoitring for aviation; it is not synched to act as a time-keeping device; nor does it commemorate a specific historic moment or personage. Indeed, the lights have no practical function or particular memorializing role whatsoever. The beacon serves only as an evanescent, immaterial monument to itself.
Measurements: 16mm transferred to DCP/ProRes, 13:20 mins
Collection:
Date Made: 2012
Materials: Film still
Virtual Collection: Original CCCA
Trailer
Artist: David K. Ross
Work ID: 85170
Description: The same duration as a standard promotional film trailer (two and a half minutes), Trailer documents the mechanical and support systems that are present at most large film productions.
Measurements: s16mm transferred to HD, 2:30 mins, silent
Collection:
Date Made: 2012
Materials: video still
Virtual Collection: Original CCCA
Trailer
Artist: David K. Ross
Work ID: 85168
Description: The same duration as a standard promotional film trailer (two and a half minutes), Trailer documents the mechanical and support systems that are present at most large film productions.
Measurements: s16mm transferred to HD, 2:30 mins, silent
Collection:
Date Made: 2012
Materials: video still
Virtual Collection: Original CCCA
The European Rooms
Artist: David K. Ross
Work ID: 85178
Description: An unhurried camera glides by bedrooms, drawing rooms, dining rooms, and entrance halls filled with finely crafted furniture and carefully selected objets all displaying a familiar world of privilege, class, and prestige. Inescapably uncanny and oneiric, the well-appointed rooms that appear in the film reveal a slow unraveling of cinematic, sonic and architectural space played out in real time.
Measurements: 27:00 mins. 5.1
Collection:
Date Made: 2014
Materials: video still
Virtual Collection: Original CCCA
Signature: Philadelphia Museum of Art
Artist: David K. Ross
Work ID: 85141
Description: Signature is a photography project which captures the visible qualities of expelled vapour released by HVAC systems (Heating Ventilation & Air Conditioning) of various art institutions and art conservation sites.
The project proposes a particular link between the interior activities of art institutions and the exterior exhaust that is a signature of these processes. The photographs capture the vapour in which trace elements of art works are ‘breathed’ out of a building on a daily basis. While acknowledging the discreet physicality of unique objects, Signature also recognizes the evanescent and ultimately unstable nature of art works. Over time, particles from all art works in a given collection disappear and collapse together on a nanoscopic level. Their particulate residue is then evacuated by the very building which protects them.
In creating a body of work focused on the elusive cloudy mass that rises from such institutions, Signature obliquely references the historic interest that artists have had in clouds, mist, steam, and smoke as subject matter for their works. Representing one of the most fugitive, dynamic, and possibly destructive of substances, the idea of ‘visible air’ has moved along a symbolic trajectory that connects the picturesque to the sublime to the tragic—from Ruskin to Turner to Stieglitz and beyond.
Measurements: 93.98 x 121.92 cm
Collection:
Date Made: 2014
Materials: photograph: inkjet print
Virtual Collection: Original CCCA
One Formula
Artist: David K. Ross
Work ID: 85184
Description: Openings used by the media on the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve Formula 1 track in Montreal.
For three hundred and sixty-two days each year there are no race cars on the Gilles Villeneuve Formula1 track in Montreal. During this time, the winding 4.3 kilometer circuit — just one stop in a tour devoted to excess and the manifestations of very fast capital — is inhabited largely by tourists and cyclists whose experience of the track is recreational. This is because Montréal’s F1 race takes place within the confines of an island park in the middle of the St. Lawrence River.
Walking, jogging or cycling the entire route, the un-motorized park goers are contained on two sides by a low protective wall, topped with security fencing. Strategic apertures cut into this fence are designed to accommodate photographic and video cameras. These openings, and their accompanying camera platforms, disseminate images from the Formula1 track well beyond the bucolic locale in which the race takes place. But for those ambulating their way around the track on more common non-race days, these openings in the fence serve as portals to the picturesque.
Measurements:
Collection:
Date Made: 2014
Materials: photograph
Virtual Collection: Original CCCA
The European Rooms
Artist: David K. Ross
Work ID: 85177
Description: An unhurried camera glides by bedrooms, drawing rooms, dining rooms, and entrance halls filled with finely crafted furniture and carefully selected objets all displaying a familiar world of privilege, class, and prestige. Inescapably uncanny and oneiric, the well-appointed rooms that appear in the film reveal a slow unraveling of cinematic, sonic and architectural space played out in real time.
Measurements: 27:00 mins. 5.1
Collection:
Date Made: 2014
Materials: video still
Virtual Collection: Original CCCA
The European Rooms
Artist: David K. Ross
Work ID: 85179
Description: An unhurried camera glides by bedrooms, drawing rooms, dining rooms, and entrance halls filled with finely crafted furniture and carefully selected objets all displaying a familiar world of privilege, class, and prestige. Inescapably uncanny and oneiric, the well-appointed rooms that appear in the film reveal a slow unraveling of cinematic, sonic and architectural space played out in real time.
Measurements: 27:00 mins. 5.1
Collection:
Date Made: 2014
Materials: video still
Virtual Collection: Original CCCA
One Formula
Artist: David K. Ross
Work ID: 85181
Description: Openings used by the media on the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve Formula 1 track in Montreal.
For three hundred and sixty-two days each year there are no race cars on the Gilles Villeneuve Formula1 track in Montreal. During this time, the winding 4.3 kilometer circuit — just one stop in a tour devoted to excess and the manifestations of very fast capital — is inhabited largely by tourists and cyclists whose experience of the track is recreational. This is because Montréal’s F1 race takes place within the confines of an island park in the middle of the St. Lawrence River.
Walking, jogging or cycling the entire route, the un-motorized park goers are contained on two sides by a low protective wall, topped with security fencing. Strategic apertures cut into this fence are designed to accommodate photographic and video cameras. These openings, and their accompanying camera platforms, disseminate images from the Formula1 track well beyond the bucolic locale in which the race takes place. But for those ambulating their way around the track on more common non-race days, these openings in the fence serve as portals to the picturesque.
Measurements:
Collection:
Date Made: 2014
Materials: photograph
Virtual Collection: Original CCCA
One Formula
Artist: David K. Ross
Work ID: 85182
Description: Openings used by the media on the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve Formula 1 track in Montreal.
For three hundred and sixty-two days each year there are no race cars on the Gilles Villeneuve Formula1 track in Montreal. During this time, the winding 4.3 kilometer circuit — just one stop in a tour devoted to excess and the manifestations of very fast capital — is inhabited largely by tourists and cyclists whose experience of the track is recreational. This is because Montréal’s F1 race takes place within the confines of an island park in the middle of the St. Lawrence River.
Walking, jogging or cycling the entire route, the un-motorized park goers are contained on two sides by a low protective wall, topped with security fencing. Strategic apertures cut into this fence are designed to accommodate photographic and video cameras. These openings, and their accompanying camera platforms, disseminate images from the Formula1 track well beyond the bucolic locale in which the race takes place. But for those ambulating their way around the track on more common non-race days, these openings in the fence serve as portals to the picturesque.
Measurements:
Collection:
Date Made: 2014
Materials: photograph
Virtual Collection: Original CCCA
One Formula
Artist: David K. Ross
Work ID: 85183
Description: Openings used by the media on the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve Formula 1 track in Montreal.
For three hundred and sixty-two days each year there are no race cars on the Gilles Villeneuve Formula1 track in Montreal. During this time, the winding 4.3 kilometer circuit — just one stop in a tour devoted to excess and the manifestations of very fast capital — is inhabited largely by tourists and cyclists whose experience of the track is recreational. This is because Montréal’s F1 race takes place within the confines of an island park in the middle of the St. Lawrence River.
Walking, jogging or cycling the entire route, the un-motorized park goers are contained on two sides by a low protective wall, topped with security fencing. Strategic apertures cut into this fence are designed to accommodate photographic and video cameras. These openings, and their accompanying camera platforms, disseminate images from the Formula1 track well beyond the bucolic locale in which the race takes place. But for those ambulating their way around the track on more common non-race days, these openings in the fence serve as portals to the picturesque.
Measurements:
Collection:
Date Made: 2014
Materials: photograph
Virtual Collection: Original CCCA
The European Rooms
Artist: David K. Ross
Work ID: 85180
Description: An unhurried camera glides by bedrooms, drawing rooms, dining rooms, and entrance halls filled with finely crafted furniture and carefully selected objets all displaying a familiar world of privilege, class, and prestige. Inescapably uncanny and oneiric, the well-appointed rooms that appear in the film reveal a slow unraveling of cinematic, sonic and architectural space played out in real time.
Measurements: 27:00 mins. 5.1
Collection:
Date Made: 2014
Materials: video still
Virtual Collection: Original CCCA
One Formula
Artist: David K. Ross
Work ID: 85185
Description: Openings used by the media on the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve Formula 1 track in Montreal.
For three hundred and sixty-two days each year there are no race cars on the Gilles Villeneuve Formula1 track in Montreal. During this time, the winding 4.3 kilometer circuit — just one stop in a tour devoted to excess and the manifestations of very fast capital — is inhabited largely by tourists and cyclists whose experience of the track is recreational. This is because Montréal’s F1 race takes place within the confines of an island park in the middle of the St. Lawrence River.
Walking, jogging or cycling the entire route, the un-motorized park goers are contained on two sides by a low protective wall, topped with security fencing. Strategic apertures cut into this fence are designed to accommodate photographic and video cameras. These openings, and their accompanying camera platforms, disseminate images from the Formula1 track well beyond the bucolic locale in which the race takes place. But for those ambulating their way around the track on more common non-race days, these openings in the fence serve as portals to the picturesque.
Measurements:
Collection:
Date Made: 2014
Materials: photograph
Virtual Collection: Original CCCA
Theodolitique
Artist: David K. Ross
Work ID: 85189
Description: Théodolitique (2015) merges the geodetic and the filmic, linking the very long history of land surveying with the comparatively new technologies of film-making. Connecting these two methods of visual observation and recording, Théodolitique documents student surveyors from the École des Métiers du Sud-Ouest-de-Montréal as they take an outdoor exam over the course of a single day.
The project utilizes a wide range of filmic and acoustic techniques — including a parabolic microphone to capture distant audio, and a custom built ‘theodocam’ to provide a surveyor’s eye view — to reflect and mimic how the students move, think and learn their trade. Recorded on a designated practice field adjacent to the École des Métiers, Théodolitique is a film that is both chorographic and choreographic.
Measurements: 15:40 mins. 35mm + digital transfered to DCP/Prores
Collection:
Date Made: 2015
Materials: video still
Virtual Collection: Original CCCA
Theodolitique
Artist: David K. Ross
Work ID: 85188
Description: Théodolitique (2015) merges the geodetic and the filmic, linking the very long history of land surveying with the comparatively new technologies of film-making. Connecting these two methods of visual observation and recording, Théodolitique documents student surveyors from the École des Métiers du Sud-Ouest-de-Montréal as they take an outdoor exam over the course of a single day.
The project utilizes a wide range of filmic and acoustic techniques — including a parabolic microphone to capture distant audio, and a custom built ‘theodocam’ to provide a surveyor’s eye view — to reflect and mimic how the students move, think and learn their trade. Recorded on a designated practice field adjacent to the École des Métiers, Théodolitique is a film that is both chorographic and choreographic.
Measurements: 15:40 mins. 35mm + digital transfered to DCP/Prores
Collection:
Date Made: 2015
Materials: video still
Virtual Collection: Original CCCA
Parodos
Artist: David K. Ross
Work ID: 85193
Description: Parodos* is a two channel video installation that depicts offstage activity during a performance of Counterpoint by choreographer Kyle Abrahams. Filmed during two complete performances at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago’s MCA Stage, Parodos provides an alternate version and vision of what spectators in the auditorium observed on stage.
[All footage was shot in a single day, 16 December 2014 during two separate performances of Counterpoint. All stills and video for this project are with the cooperation of Hubbard Street Dance Company].
Measurements: 2 channel installation; 5K transfer to HD, 73:00 mins
Collection:
Date Made: 2015
Materials: Installation view
Virtual Collection: Original CCCA
Theodolitique
Artist: David K. Ross
Work ID: 85186
Description: Théodolitique (2015) merges the geodetic and the filmic, linking the very long history of land surveying with the comparatively new technologies of film-making. Connecting these two methods of visual observation and recording, Théodolitique documents student surveyors from the École des Métiers du Sud-Ouest-de-Montréal as they take an outdoor exam over the course of a single day.
The project utilizes a wide range of filmic and acoustic techniques — including a parabolic microphone to capture distant audio, and a custom built ‘theodocam’ to provide a surveyor’s eye view — to reflect and mimic how the students move, think and learn their trade. Recorded on a designated practice field adjacent to the École des Métiers, Théodolitique is a film that is both chorographic and choreographic.
Measurements: 15:40 mins. 35mm + digital transfered to DCP/Prores
Collection:
Date Made: 2015
Materials: video still
Virtual Collection: Original CCCA
Signature: Smithsonian Museum of Natural History
Artist: David K. Ross
Work ID: 85142
Description: Signature is a photography project which captures the visible qualities of expelled vapour released by HVAC systems (Heating Ventilation & Air Conditioning) of various art institutions and art conservation sites.
The project proposes a particular link between the interior activities of art institutions and the exterior exhaust that is a signature of these processes. The photographs capture the vapour in which trace elements of art works are ‘breathed’ out of a building on a daily basis. While acknowledging the discreet physicality of unique objects, Signature also recognizes the evanescent and ultimately unstable nature of art works. Over time, particles from all art works in a given collection disappear and collapse together on a nanoscopic level. Their particulate residue is then evacuated by the very building which protects them.
In creating a body of work focused on the elusive cloudy mass that rises from such institutions, Signature obliquely references the historic interest that artists have had in clouds, mist, steam, and smoke as subject matter for their works. Representing one of the most fugitive, dynamic, and possibly destructive of substances, the idea of ‘visible air’ has moved along a symbolic trajectory that connects the picturesque to the sublime to the tragic—from Ruskin to Turner to Stieglitz and beyond.
Measurements: 93.98 x 121.92 cm
Collection:
Date Made: 2015
Materials: photograph: inkjet print
Virtual Collection: Original CCCA
Parodos
Artist: David K. Ross
Work ID: 85192
Description: Parodos* is a two channel video installation that depicts offstage activity during a performance of Counterpoint by choreographer Kyle Abrahams. Filmed during two complete performances at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago’s MCA Stage, Parodos provides an alternate version and vision of what spectators in the auditorium observed on stage.
[All footage was shot in a single day, 16 December 2014 during two separate performances of Counterpoint. All stills and video for this project are with the cooperation of Hubbard Street Dance Company].
Measurements: 2 channel installation; 5K transfer to HD, 73:00 mins
Collection:
Date Made: 2015
Materials: video still
Virtual Collection: Original CCCA
Parodos
Artist: David K. Ross
Work ID: 85194
Description: Parodos* is a two channel video installation that depicts offstage activity during a performance of Counterpoint by choreographer Kyle Abrahams. Filmed during two complete performances at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago’s MCA Stage, Parodos provides an alternate version and vision of what spectators in the auditorium observed on stage.
[All footage was shot in a single day, 16 December 2014 during two separate performances of Counterpoint. All stills and video for this project are with the cooperation of Hubbard Street Dance Company].
Measurements: 2 channel installation; 5K transfer to HD, 73:00 mins
Collection:
Date Made: 2015
Materials: Installation view
Virtual Collection: Original CCCA
Parodos
Artist: David K. Ross
Work ID: 85191
Description: Parodos* is a two channel video installation that depicts offstage activity during a performance of Counterpoint by choreographer Kyle Abrahams. Filmed during two complete performances at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago’s MCA Stage, Parodos provides an alternate version and vision of what spectators in the auditorium observed on stage.
[All footage was shot in a single day, 16 December 2014 during two separate performances of Counterpoint. All stills and video for this project are with the cooperation of Hubbard Street Dance Company].
Measurements: 2 channel installation; 5K transfer to HD, 73:00 mins
Collection:
Date Made: 2015
Materials: video still
Virtual Collection: Original CCCA
Theodolitique
Artist: David K. Ross
Work ID: 85190
Description: Théodolitique (2015) merges the geodetic and the filmic, linking the very long history of land surveying with the comparatively new technologies of film-making. Connecting these two methods of visual observation and recording, Théodolitique documents student surveyors from the École des Métiers du Sud-Ouest-de-Montréal as they take an outdoor exam over the course of a single day.
The project utilizes a wide range of filmic and acoustic techniques — including a parabolic microphone to capture distant audio, and a custom built ‘theodocam’ to provide a surveyor’s eye view — to reflect and mimic how the students move, think and learn their trade. Recorded on a designated practice field adjacent to the École des Métiers, Théodolitique is a film that is both chorographic and choreographic.
Measurements: 15:40 mins. 35mm + digital transfered to DCP/Prores
Collection:
Date Made: 2015
Materials: video still
Virtual Collection: Original CCCA
The Traces of Lost Facts
Artist: David K. Ross
Work ID: 85196
Description: Installation view: The Traces of Lost Facts, Rice University Media Centre Gallery, September 2016.
For this installation at Rice University's Media Center gallery, visitors utilized four surveyor’s levels to visually reconstruct for themselves the making of my film Théodolitique. Taking its title from a 540 AD description of surveying actives, The Traces of Lost Facts presents a sample of the research materials generated in the four-year-long process of making Théodolitique.
Calling attention to the film’s construction (it was shot using customized surveying equipment) all the photographic and video material 'traces' presented in the installation — location photographs, storyboard sketches and rushes — were mounted 14 feet from the floor in the Rice Media Center, viewable only through one of the four optical devices placed opposite them on mezzanines in the gallery space.
Accompanying the exhibition was an eponymous, limited edition publication (just twelve were printed) which served as a hybrid instruction manual/memoir elucidating the processes involved in becoming both a surveyor and a film maker.
Measurements:
Collection:
Date Made: 2016
Materials: installation
Virtual Collection: Original CCCA
The Traces of Lost Facts
Artist: David K. Ross
Work ID: 85198
Description: Accompanying catalogue for The Traces of Lost Facts, Rice University Media Centre Gallery, September 2016
For this installation at Rice University's Media Center gallery, visitors utilized four surveyor’s levels to visually reconstruct for themselves the making of my film Théodolitique. Taking its title from a 540 AD description of surveying actives, The Traces of Lost Facts presents a sample of the research materials generated in the four-year-long process of making Théodolitique.
Calling attention to the film’s construction (it was shot using customized surveying equipment) all the photographic and video material 'traces' presented in the installation — location photographs, storyboard sketches and rushes — were mounted 14 feet from the floor in the Rice Media Center, viewable only through one of the four optical devices placed opposite them on mezzanines in the gallery space.
Accompanying the exhibition was an eponymous, limited edition publication (just twelve were printed) which served as a hybrid instruction manual/memoir elucidating the processes involved in becoming both a surveyor and a film maker.
Measurements: 196 pages, full colour
Collection:
Date Made: 2016
Materials: Exhibition Catalogue: Design: Rossitza Ribarova
Virtual Collection: Original CCCA
The Traces of Lost Facts
Artist: David K. Ross
Work ID: 85197
Description: Installation view: The Traces of Lost Facts, Rice University Media Centre Gallery, September 2016.
For this installation at Rice University's Media Center gallery, visitors utilized four surveyor’s levels to visually reconstruct for themselves the making of my film Théodolitique. Taking its title from a 540 AD description of surveying actives, The Traces of Lost Facts presents a sample of the research materials generated in the four-year-long process of making Théodolitique.
Calling attention to the film’s construction (it was shot using customized surveying equipment) all the photographic and video material 'traces' presented in the installation — location photographs, storyboard sketches and rushes — were mounted 14 feet from the floor in the Rice Media Center, viewable only through one of the four optical devices placed opposite them on mezzanines in the gallery space.
Accompanying the exhibition was an eponymous, limited edition publication (just twelve were printed) which served as a hybrid instruction manual/memoir elucidating the processes involved in becoming both a surveyor and a film maker.
Measurements:
Collection:
Date Made: 2016
Materials: installation
Virtual Collection: Original CCCA
Archetypes: Steven Holl Architects, Museum of Fine Arts Houston, Houston US (III)
Artist: David K. Ross
Work ID: 85317
Description: Archétypes is a photographic project that documents full-scale architectural mock-ups as they are found on construction sites and testing facilities around the globe.
A form of proxy architecture, the mock-up is frequently comprised of disparate elements from a single building project. Windows, curtain wall systems or material samples often find themselves coupled together in an assemblage that bears more resemblance to public art installations than to architecture. Built to a scale of 1:1 and assembled to assist with particularly difficult construction details, the mock-up aids in the overall understanding of how a building's components will appear or function.
Archétypes will be published in monographic from with Standpunkte (Basel) in mid-2020.
Measurements: 53 x 71 cm
Collection:
Date Made: 2016
Materials: photograph
Virtual Collection: Original CCCA
The Traces of Lost Facts
Artist: David K. Ross
Work ID: 85195
Description: Installation view: The Traces of Lost Facts, Rice University Media Centre Gallery, September 2016.
For this installation at Rice University's Media Center gallery, visitors utilized four surveyor’s levels to visually reconstruct for themselves the making of my film Théodolitique. Taking its title from a 540 AD description of surveying actives, The Traces of Lost Facts presents a sample of the research materials generated in the four-year-long process of making Théodolitique.
Calling attention to the film’s construction (it was shot using customized surveying equipment) all the photographic and video material 'traces' presented in the installation — location photographs, storyboard sketches and rushes — were mounted 14 feet from the floor in the Rice Media Center, viewable only through one of the four optical devices placed opposite them on mezzanines in the gallery space.
Accompanying the exhibition was an eponymous, limited edition publication (just twelve were printed) which served as a hybrid instruction manual/memoir elucidating the processes involved in becoming both a surveyor and a film maker.
Measurements:
Collection:
Date Made: 2016
Materials: installation
Virtual Collection: Original CCCA
Archetypes: Johnston Marklee, Menil Drawing Institute, Houston US (I)
Artist: David K. Ross
Work ID: 85218
Description: Archétypes is a photographic project that documents full-scale architectural mock-ups as they are found on construction sites and testing facilities around the globe.
A form of proxy architecture, the mock-up is frequently comprised of disparate elements from a single building project. Windows, curtain wall systems or material samples often find themselves coupled together in an assemblage that bears more resemblance to public art installations than to architecture. Built to a scale of 1:1 and assembled to assist with particularly difficult construction details, the mock-up aids in the overall understanding of how a building's components will appear or function.
Archétypes will be published in monographic from with Standpunkte (Basel) in mid-2020.
Measurements: 71 x 53 cm
Collection:
Date Made: 2016
Materials: photograph
Virtual Collection: Original CCCA
As Sovereign As Love
Artist: David K. Ross
Work ID: 85203
Description: As Sovereign as Love is a guided, cinematic tour of Montréal’s Parc Jean Drapeau, the former site of the Expo 67 world's fair. In the film, a narrator annotates a series of unfolding vistas which have been shaped by fifty years of post-Expo 67 activity. The script for the tour is drawn directly from Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s 1939 memoir, Terre des hommes</i., the same text that gave the Montréal exposition its subtitle “Man and His World.” Saint-Exupéry’s words, penned some eight decades ago, provide uncanny descriptions of the park as it exists today.
Footage for the film is gathered by a drone that follows the original path of the now-demolished MiniRail, an elevated monorail line used to move visitors across the exposition's sites. Data extracted from archived Expo 67 engineering drawings enable an accurate retracing of the train’s path across the park, although the growth of trees and electronic interference from cellular transmission towers cause frequent breaks in what should be an uninterrupted flight. These disruptions result in stoppages that become edits. Thus, the park itself, working in conjunction with the passage of time, becomes the co-editor of the film.
As Sovereign as Love was produced for the Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal's 2017 exhibition In Search of Expo 67.
Measurements: 12:10 mins. 5.1
Collection:
Date Made: 2017
Materials: video still
Virtual Collection: Original CCCA
As Sovereign As Love
Artist: David K. Ross
Work ID: 85202
Description: As Sovereign as Love is a guided, cinematic tour of Montréal’s Parc Jean Drapeau, the former site of the Expo 67 world's fair. In the film, a narrator annotates a series of unfolding vistas which have been shaped by fifty years of post-Expo 67 activity. The script for the tour is drawn directly from Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s 1939 memoir, Terre des hommes</i., the same text that gave the Montréal exposition its subtitle “Man and His World.” Saint-Exupéry’s words, penned some eight decades ago, provide uncanny descriptions of the park as it exists today.
Footage for the film is gathered by a drone that follows the original path of the now-demolished MiniRail, an elevated monorail line used to move visitors across the exposition's sites. Data extracted from archived Expo 67 engineering drawings enable an accurate retracing of the train’s path across the park, although the growth of trees and electronic interference from cellular transmission towers cause frequent breaks in what should be an uninterrupted flight. These disruptions result in stoppages that become edits. Thus, the park itself, working in conjunction with the passage of time, becomes the co-editor of the film.
As Sovereign as Love was produced for the Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal's 2017 exhibition In Search of Expo 67.
Measurements: 12:10 mins. 5.1
Collection:
Date Made: 2017
Materials: video still
Virtual Collection: Original CCCA
As Sovereign As Love
Artist: David K. Ross
Work ID: 85200
Description: As Sovereign as Love is a guided, cinematic tour of Montréal’s Parc Jean Drapeau, the former site of the Expo 67 world's fair. In the film, a narrator annotates a series of unfolding vistas which have been shaped by fifty years of post-Expo 67 activity. The script for the tour is drawn directly from Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s 1939 memoir, Terre des hommes</i., the same text that gave the Montréal exposition its subtitle “Man and His World.” Saint-Exupéry’s words, penned some eight decades ago, provide uncanny descriptions of the park as it exists today.
Footage for the film is gathered by a drone that follows the original path of the now-demolished MiniRail, an elevated monorail line used to move visitors across the exposition's sites. Data extracted from archived Expo 67 engineering drawings enable an accurate retracing of the train’s path across the park, although the growth of trees and electronic interference from cellular transmission towers cause frequent breaks in what should be an uninterrupted flight. These disruptions result in stoppages that become edits. Thus, the park itself, working in conjunction with the passage of time, becomes the co-editor of the film.
As Sovereign as Love was produced for the Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal's 2017 exhibition In Search of Expo 67.
Measurements: 12:10 mins. 5.1
Collection:
Date Made: 2017
Materials: video still
Virtual Collection: Original CCCA
As Sovereign As Love
Artist: David K. Ross
Work ID: 85201
Description: As Sovereign as Love is a guided, cinematic tour of Montréal’s Parc Jean Drapeau, the former site of the Expo 67 world's fair. In the film, a narrator annotates a series of unfolding vistas which have been shaped by fifty years of post-Expo 67 activity. The script for the tour is drawn directly from Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s 1939 memoir, Terre des hommes</i., the same text that gave the Montréal exposition its subtitle “Man and His World.” Saint-Exupéry’s words, penned some eight decades ago, provide uncanny descriptions of the park as it exists today.
Footage for the film is gathered by a drone that follows the original path of the now-demolished MiniRail, an elevated monorail line used to move visitors across the exposition's sites. Data extracted from archived Expo 67 engineering drawings enable an accurate retracing of the train’s path across the park, although the growth of trees and electronic interference from cellular transmission towers cause frequent breaks in what should be an uninterrupted flight. These disruptions result in stoppages that become edits. Thus, the park itself, working in conjunction with the passage of time, becomes the co-editor of the film.
As Sovereign as Love was produced for the Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal's 2017 exhibition In Search of Expo 67.
Measurements: 12:10 mins. 5.1
Collection:
Date Made: 2017
Materials: video still
Virtual Collection: Original CCCA
As Sovereign As Love
Artist: David K. Ross
Work ID: 85199
Description: As Sovereign as Love is a guided, cinematic tour of Montréal’s Parc Jean Drapeau, the former site of the Expo 67 world's fair. In the film, a narrator annotates a series of unfolding vistas which have been shaped by fifty years of post-Expo 67 activity. The script for the tour is drawn directly from Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s 1939 memoir, Terre des hommes</i., the same text that gave the Montréal exposition its subtitle “Man and His World.” Saint-Exupéry’s words, penned some eight decades ago, provide uncanny descriptions of the park as it exists today.
Footage for the film is gathered by a drone that follows the original path of the now-demolished MiniRail, an elevated monorail line used to move visitors across the exposition's sites. Data extracted from archived Expo 67 engineering drawings enable an accurate retracing of the train’s path across the park, although the growth of trees and electronic interference from cellular transmission towers cause frequent breaks in what should be an uninterrupted flight. These disruptions result in stoppages that become edits. Thus, the park itself, working in conjunction with the passage of time, becomes the co-editor of the film.
As Sovereign as Love was produced for the Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal's 2017 exhibition In Search of Expo 67.
Measurements: 12:10 mins. 5.1
Collection:
Date Made: 2017
Materials: video still
Virtual Collection: Original CCCA
Hôtel de Ville
Artist: David K. Ross
Work ID: 85205
Description: On July 24th, 1967, as Charles de Gaulle gave his now famous “Vivre le Québec libre” speech at Montréal's City Hall, press photographers snapped pictures of him from a multitude of vantage points except one: the position which de Gaulle himself occupied.
Now, marked by decisive architectural transformations, matured trees, restored and renovated heritage buildings and an increase in tourism in the Old Port quartier—it is impossible to know how, or if his words directly shaped the city that was before him on that warm July evening. The speech de Gaulle offered to the people of Québec fifty years ago was construed variously as the best thing ever to be heard (by Nationalists), or the worst (by Federalists); whether provocation or platitude, inspiration or insult, benediction or curse, one thing though is unequivocal: this balcony continues to submit to the photographic impulse.
Measurements: 243.84 x 304.8 cm
Collection:
Date Made: 2017
Materials: Solvent print on adhesive vinyl
Virtual Collection: Original CCCA
Signature: Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute
Artist: David K. Ross
Work ID: 85143
Description: Signature is a photography project which captures the visible qualities of expelled vapour released by HVAC systems (Heating Ventilation & Air Conditioning) of various art institutions and art conservation sites.
The project proposes a particular link between the interior activities of art institutions and the exterior exhaust that is a signature of these processes. The photographs capture the vapour in which trace elements of art works are ‘breathed’ out of a building on a daily basis. While acknowledging the discreet physicality of unique objects, Signature also recognizes the evanescent and ultimately unstable nature of art works. Over time, particles from all art works in a given collection disappear and collapse together on a nanoscopic level. Their particulate residue is then evacuated by the very building which protects them.
In creating a body of work focused on the elusive cloudy mass that rises from such institutions, Signature obliquely references the historic interest that artists have had in clouds, mist, steam, and smoke as subject matter for their works. Representing one of the most fugitive, dynamic, and possibly destructive of substances, the idea of ‘visible air’ has moved along a symbolic trajectory that connects the picturesque to the sublime to the tragic—from Ruskin to Turner to Stieglitz and beyond.
Measurements:
Collection:
Date Made: 2017
Materials: photograph: inkjet print
Virtual Collection: Original CCCA
Archetypes: SO-IL, Amant, East Williamsburg US (II)
Artist: David K. Ross
Work ID: 85221
Description: Archétypes is a photographic project that documents full-scale architectural mock-ups as they are found on construction sites and testing facilities around the globe.
A form of proxy architecture, the mock-up is frequently comprised of disparate elements from a single building project. Windows, curtain wall systems or material samples often find themselves coupled together in an assemblage that bears more resemblance to public art installations than to architecture. Built to a scale of 1:1 and assembled to assist with particularly difficult construction details, the mock-up aids in the overall understanding of how a building's components will appear or function.
Archétypes will be published in monographic from with Standpunkte (Basel) in mid-2020.
Measurements: 53 x 71 cm
Collection:
Date Made: 2017
Materials: photograph
Virtual Collection: Original CCCA
Hôtel de Ville
Artist: David K. Ross
Work ID: 85204
Description: On July 24th, 1967, as Charles de Gaulle gave his now famous “Vivre le Québec libre” speech at Montréal's City Hall, press photographers snapped pictures of him from a multitude of vantage points except one: the position which de Gaulle himself occupied.
Now, marked by decisive architectural transformations, matured trees, restored and renovated heritage buildings and an increase in tourism in the Old Port quartier—it is impossible to know how, or if his words directly shaped the city that was before him on that warm July evening. The speech de Gaulle offered to the people of Québec fifty years ago was construed variously as the best thing ever to be heard (by Nationalists), or the worst (by Federalists); whether provocation or platitude, inspiration or insult, benediction or curse, one thing though is unequivocal: this balcony continues to submit to the photographic impulse.
Measurements: 243.84 x 304.8 cm
Collection:
Date Made: 2017
Materials: Solvent print on adhesive vinyl
Virtual Collection: Original CCCA
Archetypes: Foster + Partners, The Pavilion at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia US
Artist: David K. Ross
Work ID: 85220
Description: Archétypes is a photographic project that documents full-scale architectural mock-ups as they are found on construction sites and testing facilities around the globe.
A form of proxy architecture, the mock-up is frequently comprised of disparate elements from a single building project. Windows, curtain wall systems or material samples often find themselves coupled together in an assemblage that bears more resemblance to public art installations than to architecture. Built to a scale of 1:1 and assembled to assist with particularly difficult construction details, the mock-up aids in the overall understanding of how a building's components will appear or function.
Archétypes will be published in monographic from with Standpunkte (Basel) in mid-2020.
Measurements: 71 x 53 cm
Collection:
Date Made: 2018
Materials: photograph
Virtual Collection: Original CCCA
Archetypes: Atelier Abraha Achermann, Erlenmatt Ost 10+11, residential housing development, Basel CH
Artist: David K. Ross
Work ID: 85319
Description: Archétypes is a photographic project that documents full-scale architectural mock-ups as they are found on construction sites and testing facilities around the globe.
A form of proxy architecture, the mock-up is frequently comprised of disparate elements from a single building project. Windows, curtain wall systems or material samples often find themselves coupled together in an assemblage that bears more resemblance to public art installations than to architecture. Built to a scale of 1:1 and assembled to assist with particularly difficult construction details, the mock-up aids in the overall understanding of how a building's components will appear or function.
Archétypes will be published in monographic from with Standpunkte (Basel) in mid-2020.
Measurements: 53 x 71 cm
Collection:
Date Made: 2018
Materials: photograph
Virtual Collection: Original CCCA
Archetypes: Caruso St John Architects, ZSC Stadion, Zürich CH
Artist: David K. Ross
Work ID: 85320
Description: Archétypes is a photographic project that documents full-scale architectural mock-ups as they are found on construction sites and testing facilities around the globe.
A form of proxy architecture, the mock-up is frequently comprised of disparate elements from a single building project. Windows, curtain wall systems or material samples often find themselves coupled together in an assemblage that bears more resemblance to public art installations than to architecture. Built to a scale of 1:1 and assembled to assist with particularly difficult construction details, the mock-up aids in the overall understanding of how a building's components will appear or function.
Archétypes will be published in monographic from with Standpunkte (Basel) in mid-2020.
Measurements: 71 x 53 cm
Collection:
Date Made: 2018
Materials: photograph
Virtual Collection: Original CCCA
Archetypes: Shepley Bulfinch, Boston Children’s Hospital, Hale Family Clinical Building, Long Island US (II)
Artist: David K. Ross
Work ID: 85318
Description: Archétypes is a photographic project that documents full-scale architectural mock-ups as they are found on construction sites and testing facilities around the globe.
A form of proxy architecture, the mock-up is frequently comprised of disparate elements from a single building project. Windows, curtain wall systems or material samples often find themselves coupled together in an assemblage that bears more resemblance to public art installations than to architecture. Built to a scale of 1:1 and assembled to assist with particularly difficult construction details, the mock-up aids in the overall understanding of how a building's components will appear or function.
Archétypes will be published in monographic from with Standpunkte (Basel) in mid-2020.
Measurements: 71 x 53 cm
Collection:
Date Made: 2018
Materials: photograph
Virtual Collection: Original CCCA
Archetypes: Unknown firm, YOO Montreal, Montreal CA
Artist: David K. Ross
Work ID: 85222
Description: Archétypes is a photographic project that documents full-scale architectural mock-ups as they are found on construction sites and testing facilities around the globe.
A form of proxy architecture, the mock-up is frequently comprised of disparate elements from a single building project. Windows, curtain wall systems or material samples often find themselves coupled together in an assemblage that bears more resemblance to public art installations than to architecture. Built to a scale of 1:1 and assembled to assist with particularly difficult construction details, the mock-up aids in the overall understanding of how a building's components will appear or function.
Archétypes will be published in monographic from with Standpunkte (Basel) in mid-2020.
Measurements: 53 x 71 cm
Collection:
Date Made: 2018
Materials: photograph
Virtual Collection: Original CCCA
Archetypes: NADAAA, Kendall Square at MIT – Site 4, Long Island US (I)
Artist: David K. Ross
Work ID: 85219
Description: Archétypes is a photographic project that documents full-scale architectural mock-ups as they are found on construction sites and testing facilities around the globe.
A form of proxy architecture, the mock-up is frequently comprised of disparate elements from a single building project. Windows, curtain wall systems or material samples often find themselves coupled together in an assemblage that bears more resemblance to public art installations than to architecture. Built to a scale of 1:1 and assembled to assist with particularly difficult construction details, the mock-up aids in the overall understanding of how a building's components will appear or function.
Archétypes will be published in monographic from with Standpunkte (Basel) in mid-2020.
Measurements: 53 x 71 cm
Collection:
Date Made: 2018
Materials: photograph
Virtual Collection: Original CCCA
