Pierre-François Ouellette art contemporain is pleased to present a selection of works produced by Adad Hannah over the course of the last three years at the request of museum institutions. Hannah had the privilege to receive commissions by institutions on several continents to create new bodies of work: in Europe at the Apartment museum of I.I. Brodsky in St. Petersburg, in North America at the Tamayo Museum in Mexico City, the San Antonio museum of Art in Texas and the Judith & Norman Alix Art Gallery in Ontario and in Asia at the Samsung Leeum museum in Seoul. Adad Hannah has also been awarded recently public art commissions in Quebec including on the Loyola campus of the Concordia University and the future library Marc-Favreau in Montreal.
The gallery has chosen works related to three museum commissions The Diversions (Judith & Norman Alix Art Gallery), Daydreams of the Drunken Scholar(San Antonio Museum of Art) and 18 minutes (Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art) in which gesture becomes a central subject in the work.
The Diversions
Produced within the community of Sarnia, Ontario, The Diversions presents the continuation of a process of working in communities on large-scale artworks. This project grew out of a series of workshops with local students in Sarnia who were then also the models in the work. The Diversions consists of two staged scenes—a jailhouse and a schoolhouse. Both sets are made out of painted wood and both are constructed so that the very crates the project is packed into turn themselves inside-out to become the two sets. The project produced an eight-channel video installation as well as stand-alone video works and photographs.
The Diversions was commissioned by the Judith & Norman ALIX Art Gallery in Sarnia, Ontario and curated by Lisa Daniels. A full-colour catalogue with newly commissioned texts was produced by the gallery on the occasion of the exhibition.
Daydreams of the Drunken Scholar
This cultural mashup mixes objects and people from diverse origins. It was inspired by two sets of Japanese prints (erotic Shunga woodcuts, and richly coloured and textured Yoshitoshi prints) and pieces of Chinese furniture in the collection of the San Antonio Museum of Art. The project was shot in the museum using many objects from the collection as well as others borrowed from collectors. The models for this project were mostly local artists and performance artists.
Daydreams of the Drunken Scholar was commissioned by the San Antonio Museum of Art in San Antonio, Texas and curated by David Rubin.
18 minutes
2010, 3:04, 6-channel HD video.
Aside from our faces, our hands are undoubtedly the most expressive parts of the human body. In 18 Minutes we see details of people at a party—their hands frozen in the air as they eat, talk, drink, gesture, and caress. The work is comprised of 18 one-minute segments.
This project was produced on location at the Baldwin House on Deer Lake in Burnaby, British Columbia. The three-bedroom residence was designed by architect Arthur Erickson for Dr. William and Ruth Baldwin in 1963.
The project was commissioned by the Samsung LEEUM museum, in Seoul, South Korea, and curated by Kyunghwa Koo.
