The Polygon Gallery presents the North American premiere of Jeremy Shaw’s Phase Shifting Index

Critically acclaimed installation is an ambitious phenomenological experience that challenges perceptions of time and space

MAY 17, 2023 (VANCOUVER, CANADA) — From June 23 to Sept. 24, 2023, The Polygon Gallery presents the North American premiere of Phase Shifting Index by North Vancouver-born, Berlin-based artist Jeremy Shaw. The immersive installation combines film, sound, and light to tell a story about an imagined future in which human beliefs and survival are at stake.

“Phase Shifting Index is Jeremy’s most ambitious and accomplished work to date, a kinetic and dynamic combination of sound, light and visuals,” says Reid Shier, Director of The Polygon Gallery and the exhibition’s curator. “The work follows a trilogy of films the artist completed over the past decade that lay the groundwork for its parafictional themes: Quantification Trilogy (2014–2018). Phase Shifting Index received wide acclaim since opening at Pompidou Centre in Paris in 2020, and we are proud to bring this work to North American audiences for the first time.”

Phase Shifting Index is a seven-channel video, sound, and light installation that functions as a science-fiction pseudo-documentary about seven distinct subcultures that believe they can fundamentally alter reality. Each screen shows a group engaging in ritualistic movements while dressed in clothing that places them in periods ranging from the 1960s to the 1990s. Shaw uses outdated modes of 20th-century video technology (such as 16mm film and Hi-8 video tape), while interviews in indecipherable languages are subtitled in English. All seven channels are tied together by an overarching narrator who describes their belief systems and the significance of their movements: body-mind centering, robotic popping-and-locking, modern and postmodern dance, jump-style, hardcore punk skanking, and trust exercises, amongst others.

As the work progresses, the audiovisual elements of each screen draws the viewer into a dramatic narrative arc. At the climax, the seven autonomous subcultural groups align in a trans-temporal dance routine, with all subjects on all screens engaged in the same cathartic, synchronized movements, before disintegrating into abstraction and chaos. Sounds and sights collide on screen and then meld into a synaptic colour field. The result is a suspension of time and space, as the seven parallel realities fuse into one psychedelic art installation.

Phase Shifting Index premiered at Centre Pompidou, Paris in 2020, and has toured to Frankfurter Kunstverein, Germany; Kumu Art Museum, Estonia; ARoS Art Museum, Denmark, and Museum of New and Old, Tasmania. Following its presentation at The Polygon Gallery, it will travel to Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal in 2024.

The Opening Celebration takes place on Thursday, June 22 at 7pm. Additional programming that expands on themes in Phase Shifting Index will be announced closer to the opening date.

Jeremy Shaw (1976, North Vancouver, Canada) works in a variety of media to explore altered states and the cultural and scientific practices that aspire to map transcendental experience. Shaw has had solo exhibitions at Centre Pompidou, Paris, MoMA PS1, New York, Schinkel Pavillon, Berlin, MONA, Tasmania, as well as Presentation House Gallery, where he premiered DMT in 2004 and Something’s Happening Here in 2009. He has also been featured in international surveys such as the 57th Venice Biennale, 16th Lyon Biennale and Manifesta 11, Zurich. In 2016 he was awarded the Sobey Art Award and in 2018 was artist-in-residence at the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles. Works by Shaw are held in public collections worldwide including the Museum of Modern Art, New York, Centre Pompidou, Paris, Tate Modern, London, and the National Gallery of Canada.

Press kit and photos
bit.ly/PhaseShiftingIndex

Press contacts
Deborah Hui
647 492 9618
deborah@inesmin.com

Sarah Abbas
778 929 0977
sarah@ninepointagency.com

Banner Image: Jeremy Shaw, Phase Shifting Index, 2020, 7 channel video, sound and light installation. Courtesy of the artist and Macaulay & Co Fine Art.