The Polygon Gallery showcases the internationally-acclaimed visual artist Susan Hiller’s first Canadian solo exhibition

Susan Hiller: Altered States from May 24 to Sept. 2, 2018

The Polygon Gallery , a stunning new architectural gem on the water in North Vancouver, is showcasing a new exhibit  – Susan Hiller – Altered States, an internationally acclaimed visual artist – her first Canadian solo exhibition.  

One of the most influential artists of her generation, Susan Hiller has been an innovator for close to five decades. Altered States features landmark artworks that bring to light inexplicable human experiences.

Comprising video installations and photographs, Altered States focuses on Hiller’s decades’ long investigation into dream states, the irrational, and the mysteries of our collective unconscious. Her artworks encourage associative connections by playing tricks with our subliminal wishes and fears.

Involving extensive research, Hiller assembles audio and visual artefacts from diverse cultural source material, mapping popular beliefs to grapple with our understanding of the inexplicable. She provocatively blurs the differences between fact and fiction by evoking the occult, the haunted, and the paranormal.

The exhibition includes PSI Girls, a five-projection sequence of coloured footage of adolescent girls performing telekinetic feats, drawn from 1980s and ’90s movies. Their ecstatic states of mind, amplified by rhythmic drumming, produces an unsettling yet mesmerizing effect. Referred to as cosmic storytelling, Resounding (Infrared) creates a hypnotic environment of visual and audio recordings of mysterious phenomena. An ongoing series that began in the early seventies, From India to Planet Mars, is a collection of unconscious scribblings by people in states of lucid dreaming that relates to Hiller’s long-term interest in language.

According to curator Helga Pakasaar, “The insights of this pioneering woman artist into the impact of communications technologies through assertions of extra-sensory perceptions are especially relevant in today’s digital culture. In our time of ‘fake news’, Hiller’s art reveals the complexities of how we conceive true and false.”

Admission is always by donation, courtesy of BMO Financial Group.  For further information visit thepolygon.ca

Susan Hiller, PSI Girls, 1999 (detail), five-screen video installation with sound, © Susan Hiller; courtesy Lisson Gallery