John Massey (artist)
| John Massey | |
|---|---|
| Born | July 6, 1950 (age 67) |
| Nationality | Canadian |
| Education |
Trent University OCAD University |
| Known for |
Contemporary art Video art Photography Installation art |
| Awards | 2002 Iskowitz Prize for Visual Arts |
John Massey (born July 6, 1950) is a Canadian artist from Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Since the 1980s, Massey’s installations, sculptures, and films have established him as one of Canada’s most prominent contemporary artists. Massey combines conventional photography with computer manipulation. In his photograph and video projects he uses minimal effects to create works that inhabit a middle ground between the depicted and the created. His works are widely exhibited and are in many private and public collections, including the Art Gallery of Ontario, the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, the Fonds National dâ Art Contemporain, Paris, and the Ydessa Hendeles Art Foundation. In 2006, Massey’s work was included in the exhibition "Beyond Cinema: The Art of Projection" at the Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin. In 2014, his works were included in the Montreal Biennale. He was awarded the Gershon Iskowitz Award for lifetime achievement in 2001.
Massey is the son of architect, Hart Massey II, and grandson of the first Canadian-born Governor General, Vincent Massey. Massey spent his early life in Toronto before moving to Ottawa at the age of eight. The house Massey grew up in was designed by his father in the manner of the renowned modernist architect, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. This house provided Massey with his first introduction to modernism, a stark, minimalist aesthetic that would become a hallmark of his work. Massey later re-inhabited the house for a short time in order to photograph it for his 2004 series Phantoms of the Modern.
In 1971, he attended Trent University in Peterborough where he studied English and History, later transferring to the Ontario College of Art and Design (now OCAD University). From 1981–83, he was hired by OCAD to teach Experimental Arts.
Massey was married to the late Canadian author and artist, Susan Harrison.
Currently, he teaches as a Professor at the University of Toronto, in the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Design.
Originally produced in 1982 in 16mm film, this triptych details a real time conversation between the artist and a hitchhiker he picked up in Southern Ontario. Massey used three screens to convey the intricacies of communication, visually portraying misunderstandings and thought processes. As he converses with a hitchhiker, the screens alternate between images of the landscape, the driver and his passenger, and stock footage shots of the things they talk about. The conversation between the two strangers is somewhat banal, consisting of typical small talk about where they live and work. Their social differences surface first, but it is clear that they want to communicate and work hard to find common ground through their immediate attempt to find common points of interest and struggle to understand one another.
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