Updated with new stuff from a busy Summer.

Link

We contributed a couple of photo layouts to EC Book 1, the new quarterly creative publication from Electric Company. The book launch is on Thursday March 25, 2010, 7:00 pm at Resistor Gallery, 284e College Street

It’s already a year old but the video we directed for Circlesquare’s Dancers was invited to be in International Film Festival Breda in the Netherlands.  The video will be screened in the program Out Loud/ Music In Motion on Friday 26th of March at 15:30.

I’ll be teaching an advanced motion design course at Vancouver Film School this term.  Motion Design 4 will will explore the history of title design, analyzing film for theme and composition, understanding storytelling, semiotics, film/TV branding.

Opening night details after the jump.

ArtWalk Vancouver 2010 in collaboration with GRACE-GALLERY presents

GRACE-GALLERY SATELLITE OPENING NIGHT

Friday February 12th starting @ 6pm
2 – 32 WATER STREET
10 successive spaces
20,000 square feet

Featuring 23 of Vancouver’s top artists:
Raif Adelberg, Lisa Birke, Ronan Boyle, Bienvenido Cruz, Andy Dixon, The Dark, Christopher Donnelly, Christopher Fadden, Kris Krug, Malcolm Levy, Jeremy Riley, Pamela Masik, Jennifer Mawby, Christian Nicolay, Jeff Petry, Black Peter, Office Supplies Inc., Stacy Sakai, Jesse Savath, Philippe Sokazo, Johnny Taylor, Andrew Tong, Weakhand

UPDATE:

The Dark, unrinating on his collaboration with Ronan Boyle

Featuring Work by:
Raif Adelberg, Ronan Boyle , Bienvenido Cruz, Andy Dixon, Michael Doehle, Christopher Fadden, Angela Fama, Indigo, Kris Krug, Malcolm Levy, Bobby Mathieson, Chad Murray, Neal Nolan, Terri Potratz, Stacy Sakai, Philippe Sokazo

December 16, 2009
grace-gallery
1898 Main St. Vancouver

Land Sea Air: Electric Company Print Show 2009
Resistor Gallery, Toronto
Sept 17 – Oct 31, 2009

We wish we could have been in Krakow when they screened Dancers last moth for the Krakow Film Festival, but we just can’t be everywhere, no matter how hard we try.

We’ve just finished a short stint back in Toronto. We did a couple of shoots, ran over a lot of equipment, went to a few meetings and met a lot of people at NXNE.

Keep your fingers crossed – something big is coming.

We’ve also set up a Channel to collect the stuff we’ve worked on from all over Vimeo. It’ll also make it easier for all you RSS guys to stay up to date. We even came up with a snazzy name for it: Bienvenido Cruz.

On February 12th, 2009 grace-gallery threw a party to open their annual Love Letters Show, launch Wrighteous Design‘s new necklace line, and to premiere our new video. Circlesquare’s Dancers was screened three times to over 300 guests over the course of the evening.
Crowd reaction was hard to guage due to the excessive amount of stimuli,
but we’re pretty sure bricks were shat.

Photo courtesy of Rony Alwin at Rony’s Photo Booth.

The Province is one of the two major daily newspapers in British Columbia.

Lotusmodern started in 2000 as a job board to help young web designers. Through the years it evolved into a monthly web zine with a staff of contributors and a very loyal readership.

By 2006, crippling technical problems threatened to close down the site, but we persevered for another year. It was only after coming to the realization that most your web designers were ungrateful egomainiacal assholes that the last version of Lotusmodern turned its back on the community it helped build.

Everything you like, I liked 5 years ago.
- Ryan McGinley

The latest reincarnation of Lotusmodern (version 6?) covers issues relevant to only the top 3% of the population. It filters through avant guard trends in fashion, music, art and culture, giving its audience a head start on what the other 97% of the great unwashed masses will be going bananas about next year.

OMG! We finally updated our reel!

download .mov (right click and save)

Winter 2007 Design Reel (right click and save)

Zoo openned at the grace-gallery in Vancouver on October 23, 2008.
It was an exhibit of a series of 13 Cintra-mounted digital Lightjet prints.

With tongue in cheek, I present a collection of black and white prints. Created from found photographs of animals, the creatures have been consciously altered, possessing human faces that gaze directly at the viewer.

If Zoo brings to mind the following ideas, then you have been graced (sic) with some knowledge of critical theory, making you part of the dying culture of the intellectual. That said, if nothing that follows these words makes sense to you, just enjoy the funny pictures.

There is some inherent narcissism in creating and exhibiting art. Zoo, in the context of art exhibitions, is both reflective and critical of most exhibitions. Not merely in the literal sense of calling most shows a total joke, but also participating in the post-modern discourse that anyone with a paintbrush can call themselves an artist.

It seems everyone seeks a certain level of fame, consciously or not. Creating “art” seems to be one of the easiest ways to demand it. We are a generation of children, taught to express every feeling and concern, regardless of how minute and privileged they may seem to others. Unlike other self-gratifying endeavours, art does not technically require hard work, an education, training or accountability.

As an exhibit, Zoo could be viewed as a satire on urban folk-art, made without much more direction than that of the aesthetic. Lacking any semblance of subtext, it tenuously clings roots in street art. Though seemingly personal and vacant, it does not fall under the umbrella of Outsider Art, if that term is still valid in current culture.

Though I acknowledge the fetishism of the process, subject and image, I assure you that this is the wrong road to go down when considering the work. Simply, this preciousness in technique is due to an archaic sense of craftsmanship. Not even the choice of source images was well considered. The combination of images has little to do with any personality or character trait, and most have been paired out of convenience.

I hope some will be moved to hold a discussion on the nature of digital reproduction and its most recent effects on Baudrillard’s hyperreality. We could discuss the dichotomy in creating a portrait by vandalising its subjects with childlike malice. One could see the exploitation of animals for the purpose of entertainment and commercial purposes. Perhaps violence and outrage will ensue, and the streets will run red with blood. None of these things will happen. People will just smile and nod.

Nothing has value, apart from that which we choose to place on it. It is up to the viewer to create their meaning, while at the same time creating the possibility or option to destroy the opinions of all others.

I chose to drop some significant words in a statement, not to describe what this exhibit is about, but simply because I rarely have the opportunity to do so. Like most art, exhibits, and statements, this is a joke…

…Zoo is just a little more OMG WTF.

Zoo would not have been possible without the support of grace-gallery Director, Rachel Zottenberg, Zoe Peled (who edited the statement), and Macartney Tonello-Greenfield (who actually got the prints made). Thanks.

I guess it might be a diary of sorts. A very selective diary written in a kind of visual shorthand that you may or may not have to be fucked up to decipher.

The Great Escape is a collection of photographs documenting distractions, shenannigans, and hijinx from the last two years. This, of course, means that if we ran into you some time between January 2006 and March 2008, there’s probably a photo of you in the book. Preview it here. It’s available in softcover, hardcover, or with a dust jacket. Get your copy now at Blurb.

The Great Escape

2006-2008

By Bienvenido Cruz

Book Preview

Fujiya & Miyagi – Collarbone
Dir.: John Davison
prod.: Grönland Records
www.gronland.com

Kanye West – Can’t Tell Me Nothing
dir.: Michael Blieden
prod.: Zach Galifianakis, Inman Young
www.zachgalifianakis.com

Eglantine Gouzy – BOA
dir.: Sophie Gateau
prod.: Osaka Recordings
www.osaka.ie

Evangelicals – Midnight Vignette
dir.: Matt Leach
prod.: Dead Oceans
www.deadoceans.com

Simian Mobile Disco – Hustler
dir.: Ace Norton
prod.: Partizan
www.partizan.com

Isan – Cinnabar
dir.: Luis Briceno & Patrick Volve
prod.: Morr Music
www.morrmusic.com

Snoop Dogg – Sensual Seduction
dir.: Melina
prod.: Universal Music Polska
www.universalmusic.pl

Double Adaptor – 200 Nanowebbers
Re?.  | dir.: Semiconductor
prod.: Osaka Recordings
www.osaka.ie
Emily Haines – Our Hell
dir.: Jaron Albertin
prod.: Grönland Records
www.gronland.com

Huoratron – $$ Troopers
dir.: Lauri Warsta
prod.: Las Palmas Films
www.laspalmas.nu

Cadence Weapon – Sharks
dir.: Duane Critchon, Chris Grismer
prod.: Big Dada Recordings
www.bigdada.com

Pink Freud – Dziwny jest ten kraj
dir.: Maciej Szupica, Przemys?aw Adamski
prod.: Universal Music Polska
www.universalmusic.pl

Santogold – L.E.S Artistes
dir.: Nima Nourizadeh
prod.: Partizan
www.partizan.com

The Horrors – She’s The New Thing
dir.: Corin Hardy
prod.: Universal Music Polska
www.universalmusic.pl

Familjen – Det Snurrar I Min Skalle
dir.: Johan Söderberg
prod.: Adrian Recordings
www.adrianrecordings.com

Circlesquare – Fight Sounds Part 1
dir.: Bienvenido Cruz
prod.: Output Recordings
www.circlesquare.ca

Acid Pauli – Billy The Killy
dir.: Luis Briceno
prod.: Metronomic
www.metronomic.fr

Chinese Man Records – Skank In The Air
dir.: Fred & Annabelle
prod.: Chinese Man Records
www.chinesemanrecords.com

Grizzly Bear – Knife
dir.: Encyclopedia Pictura
prod.: Ghost Robot
www.ghostrobot.com

Electric President – Grand Machine No 12
dir.: Luis Briceno & Anna Recalde Miranda
prod.: Morr Music
www.morrmusic.com

Phosphorescent – A Picture of Our Thorn Up Praise
dir.: Zachary Sluser, Matt Thiesen
prod.: Dead Oceans
www.deadoceans.com

Daedelus – Make it so
dir.: No-Domain
prod.: No-Domain
www.no-domain.com

Little Dragon – Twice
dir.: Johannes Nyholm
prod.: Peacefrog
www.peacefrog.com

Fido was also nominated for three awards, but most of the work we did on that film got cut. Thanks Lionsgate.

Kerr, Sam. “The Outside Man” Ion Magazine. 5.9.44 (2007): pp.46.
Cover

Page 46