The New World

September 29th, 2009

If you haven’t already heard of filmmaker Mark Lewis, allow us to introduce you. Making films that deal with sociological issues (race, class, and tolerance), Mark Lewis has been given the honour of representing Canada at the 2009 Venice Biennale International Art Exhibition, Making Worlds. A perfect venue and title to exhibit Lewis’s two films: Nathan Phillips Square, A Winter’s Night, Skating and The Fight.

Like fellow Canadian Stan Douglas, Lewis engages audiences by creating thought provoking, fictionalized, silent narratives. Combining rear-projections (the same technique Hitchcock used in the 1950s) with today’s digital technology, Lewis achieves a visual mash-up of our everyday environments – making the familiar, unfamiliar.

Once you notice this, reality is completely thrown off kilter and your eyes are constantly drawn to the background of the scene. It is the context of the action that becomes important within Lewis’s films, and in the end, it is the building of worlds that we watch. We’ve been admirers for ages, and hope after Lewis’s presentation at the Biennale that the whole world will in fact, be watching too. Making Worlds runs until November 22.

www.labiennale.org/en/art/exhibition/
www.marklewisstudio.com