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Ilan Sandler
Biography
Ilan Sandler has received numerous awards including grants from the Canada Council for the Arts, The Social Sciences Research Council of Canada and the Nova Scotia Department of Culture. Recent solo exhibitions of his sculptures, installations and videos were in the US and Canada.
Born in Johannesburg (South Africa) in 1971, Ilan Sandler and his family emigrated to Toronto six years later, in 1977. Ilan studied at the University of Toronto, where he received a B.Sc. in Physics, and at the Ontario College of Art and Design, where he completed an Honours Fine Arts certificate. In 2000 he was awarded an MFA from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia. Ilan then went on to teach at the University of the Arts and Moore College of Art and Design, and most recently at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design. He is currently living and running a studio in Halifax, Nova Scotia. He is the Executive Director of the Centre For Art Tapes.
Artist's Statement
In my studio practice I use my graphic, sculptural and digital media skills to develop conceptual frameworks for the production of sculptures, installations and new media projects. My current research develops three interests: the mechanisms within machines that contribute to ciphering thoughts, emotions and information into art; the workings of the human senses, particularly sight, hearing, and touch; and approaches to integrating artwork into the physical architecture of outdoor environments that will directly engage the public.
My most recent topic of study relates the current English alphabet to its predecessors; Egyptian hieroglyphics, the Phoenician alphabet and other Proto-Sianatic alphabets. Using digital technologies I have made a large steel book with clusters of words cut into the steel pages. The clustered text shows that contemporary changes in printing and digital media are influencing the symbolic languages, codes, and alphabets found in books in ways that alter the imprint of text on a page. The steel book is a monument poised between eras in the evolution of thought.
In my research on the senses and specifically touch I am translating various tactile sensations into sound, video and sculptural installations. Through the use of digital media I am exploring whether the personal experience of being physically touched can be transformed into sculptural objects that lead to a deeper understanding of the subjective sensation. My sculptures of a 6-foot finger and a 12-foot hand that reverberates with the sounds of touch receptors firing, depict the less tangible notions of touch and allow me to traverse the field of sensory perception. The hand and finger were preceded by the Roaming Eyeball, which has rolled through several cities videotaping its path and An Ear to the Sky, which has floated in three harbours and most recently been installed on an exterior wall of a gallery recording sounds in its vicinity. After completing aural and visual pieces that were large relative to the body but diminished by the natural environments they moved in, I began to turn my attention to the more subjective and deeply internal sense of touch. The exaggerated size of the twelve-foot hand and six-foot finger magnifies their ability to meet and intercede in the world, reflecting what I believe to be the true scale of their roles as the carriers of sensory messages and the agents of human will.
In my long-term projects, Arrest in Philadelphia, and Pulse in St. Louis, I used industrial materials and digital media to create time-based installations. Many of my projects are interdisciplinary by nature; for example, researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology supplied the sounds of touch receptors firing for the hand. In previous projects I have collaborated with professionals from medical, academic and scientific disciplines. I worked with research dermatologists in the development of The Mouse Project and industrial technicians on the Pulse project. I have also collaborated with individuals on a deeply personal basis in recorded interviews gathering perspectives and opinions for text-based projects such as Arrest, which is about my own family's tragedy, and Table Talk, conversations with victims of violence.