Vincent Trasov

ChertLüdde presents historic works of Canadian artist Vincent Trasov in Controlling Chaos. Highlighted in the solo show are two series. The first is his process paintings; for these, he set snow-covered canvases ablaze, creating dynamic interactions between construction and destruction. As vibrant banners created through a mix of ritual and play, they transform raw elements into bold geometric forms. Alongside these are his heat-treated text works on paper, displaying the artist’s fascination with ephemerality. Words like “Boy”, “Junge” and “Garçon”, each with its own linguistic connotations, reverberate across chemically processed scrap paper in the series Boys’ Choir (1984). Both of these series follow Trasov and his colleague Michael Morris’s DAAD residency in Berlin and are directly connected to the location in which they were made, resonating with the avant-garde spirit that defined Berlin’s cultural landscape in the 1980s. At present, Trasov continues to live and work in Germany and Canada.

Vincent Trasov (b. 1947, Edmonton, Canada) is a painter, video and performance artist. Deeply involved in the development of networks, his work is often media-based and has a collaborative spirit. Image Bank, which he co-founded in 1970 with Michael Morris, facilitated an international method for personal exchange of information between artists. Using aliases that frequently changed, Image Bank was a subversive project reworking images and text found in mainstream media.

Since 1971, Trasov has been working with video. It was around the same time that Trasov assumed the alter ego Mr. Peanut through performances, Mail Art, happenings, exhibitions, drawings and sculptures. Many of these performances as Mr. Peanut were recorded on tape, including his campaign as Mayor of Vancouver in 1974.

In 1973, he was co-founder and co-director of Western Front Society, Vancouver, a center for the production and presentation of new art activity. In 1981, he was invited with Morris as a guest of Berliner Künstlerprogramm des DAAD to Berlin. Ten years later, the two founded the Morris/Trasov Archive, now in the collection of the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, Vancouver, to research contemporary art and communication. Trasov has had numerous international exhibitions and is represented in public and private collections in both Europe and North America.

At present, he continues to live and work in Germany and Canada. While in Germany, he helped to establish the Werkstatt Brandenstein, a production and presentation center for contemporary art in Brandenstein, Saxony-Anhalt.