The Armory Show: Javits Center, 429 11th Ave, New York, NY 10001

Beau Dick and Couzyn van Heuvelen

Focus Section, Booth F26

Curated by Candice Hopkins

Fazakas Gallery's booth brings together late Kwakwaka'wakw artist Beau Dick and Inuk artist Couzyn van Heuvelen for an opportunity to examine the interface between two artistic practices deeply informed by the land, culture, traditions, and technologies of their respective homelands. Dick and van Heuvelen confront the past and present in ways that simultaneously speak to both.

The concerns of the present are played out with signifiers of a history that is continuous rather than fixed or lost as "the past." Beau Dick utilized the ancient cedar trees who lived alongside his ancestors and whose new forms, shaped by the hands of the artist, bear witness to the present and future. These masks speak to the physical and ceremonial culture of their creation, through which the deep connection to the forest is continually reinforced and echoed. In their completed form, the masks become beings sent out into the world by the artist to live as they were, are, and will forever be, connecting even in places where their presence seems dissonant. Their disruption of modern spaces, be they urban, art, or contemporary, reminds us to reject the present's hold on truth, providing a new opportunity for shaping the future. 

Couzyn van Heuvelen plays with scale, materials, and modern fabrication technologies to produce large-scale sculptural works based on traditional tools and implements from his Inuit culture, bringing these objects into dialogue with contemporary art. In the Arctic, lived experiences are rooted in traditional methodologies insulated from western concepts of preservation and consumption. Van Heuvelen's monumental sculptures harken back to the land and push issues of climate, technology, and cultural and ancestral values to the forefront. From giant fishing lures installed overhead to a life-size sled carved from soapstone - a material typically reserved for miniatures - van Heuvelen's enlarged traditional objects immerse the viewer in a world of shifted perspectives. By speaking to a life lived on ice and snow, van Heuvelen's sculptures amplify and celebrate the Inuit people, a group whose collective voice rarely resonates outside the borders of their remote territories.

VIP Preview

Thursday, Sept 7, 2023 | Invitation only

Public Dates

Friday, Sept 8, 2023 | 11AM - 7PM
Saturday, Sept 9, 2023 | 11AM - 7PM
Sunday, Sept 10, 2023 | 11AM - 6PM

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