RUNNING WIDE OPEN

DAVID ASKEVOLD
SPIRIT JOSH
YYZ ARTISTS’ OUTLET
DECEMBER 5
2019




In David Askevold’s “Very Soon You Will, with Carol Williams” the room is dark and a recording of 14 tuning forks is playing in the room; the subject is asked to lie on a cot and relax, an overhead spotlight illuminates the face. Carol Williams is asked to imagine a soft focus screen behind her eyelids where images will come and go and she is to describe what she sees. She is then told that she "will very soon experience a form of death” and asked if she is surprised this is happening to her. A consistent set of conditions begin to set in and the dialogue description of the images she is seeing and experiencing takes place. A mild form of hypnosis seems to set in.


David Askevold was an interdisciplinary conceptual artist, whose work varied in theme as well as medium over his career. His artwork, often manifested on videotape, is usually the result of a non-strategy, collaboration, and selected circumstance, inviting the unscripted, unchoreographed participation of others as a necessary part of their artistic practice. 


Spirit Josh is Matt Jonn Lewis, Sam Szigeti, and Alex Nunes. The Spirit Josh album played is a gift to Josh, little brother of Matt Jonn Lewis, on his would be 21st birthday. Josh passed away and left Matt a little money with which he bought a guitar and wrote to the ether.