NOAM GONICK Born 1973, Winnipeg. Lives and works in Winnipeg.
LUIS JACOB Born 1971, Lima, Peru. Lives and works in Toronto.
Wild Flowers of Manitoba is a performative installation of still photos, moving images and sound from the shores of Lake Winnipeg. Four young men act out an improbable survivalist lifestyle during the summer of 2006. The script establishes a nature film set and a vision of a Hellenistic youth-cult. Like wild flowers, the subjects are intimately tied to and scatter in a seductive nesting pattern. Staged for the cameras, the set and subjects evoke a distant, more innocent era for alternative, collective lifestyles.
Noam Gonick and Luis Jacob recorded subjects whose every touch and glance links their homosocial activity to the shadows of death amidst spiritual transcendence. While an intense presence is projected by each body, the subjects can lose their theatrical pretence when suddenly dwarfed against the Canadian landscape of rocks and bush. Their love for nature guides their every action and makes theirs an intense and enduring investigation into group social dynamics and the parameters of communication in contemporary life. The effect is an unpretentious filmic epic and demands a sequel in your mind.
Four video projections and a sound track are set in a geodesic dome.
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