4th floor
Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 film The Shining ends with a chase through a hedge maze and a final scene that implies the history of the hotel is stuck in a perpetual loop. The Morning Has Gold In Its Mouth explores how a group of dedicated fans have found themselves stuck in this maze, searching and re-searching for clues as to its meaning. For them, Kubrick is a meticulous genius, with an obsessive attention to detail. The countless continuity errors in the film are therefore seen as intentional. Unearthing and decoding these clues and dual narratives has become an endless obsession for these devotees, many of whom have likely spent more time with the film than Kubrick himself. This work follows them down the rabbit hole.
A multi-volume bookwork presents a frame-by-frame account of the film, culled from blogs, fan forums and film sites. The writings present a variety of arcane theories, including that the film is a metaphor for the treatment of native Americans, an investigation into the gold standard monetary system, an allegory about the Holocaust, and an apology from Kubrick for helping NASA stage the moon landing.
Dave Dyment's practice is primarily concerned with how pop culture is shaped and reshaped, and its subsequent broader impact. He is particularly interested in the secondary life of culture, the way that it’s manipulated and masticated and spit back out again: whether it's a remix video on YouTube, tribute sites, fan fiction, or the myriad ways that we shape our lives based on the behavior of fictional characters.
Dyment's work then, is an investigation into the language and syntax of cinema, television, books and records. It is an exploration of the tropes and memes, the delivery devices, and an examination of the way that dominant narrative structures affect history, knowledge, time, etc. It is a pulling at the seams of the fabric of a fictional universe and a search for shared associations and alternate meanings.
Dave Dyment is a Toronto-based artist whose work has been seen in exhibitions across Canada, as well as internationally. Recent projects include Hourglass Sand in the Vaseline (MKG127, November 2012), The Day After, Tomorrow (Nuit Blanche, October 2012) and Is It What It Is and Other Questions (the Power Plant, August 2012). In 2008 he was artist in residence at the Glenfiddich Distillery in northern Scotland. His work can be viewed here and heard on Aural Cultures (YYZ Books, 2004) and New Life After Fire (Art Metropole, 2003), a collaboration with Lee Ranaldo of Sonic Youth. He is represented by MKG127.
