Peter Gazendam
Title of the work: AS-RA
Medium: c-print
Date of Production: 2007-2010
Edition # : 1 of 1
Signed and Dated (Y/N): N
Estimated Market Value: $800
Artist’s comments on the work:
In the summer of 1945 Dr. Robert J. Oppenheimer, known as the “father of the atomic bomb”, chalked the text that appears in this image on the door of a room in a New Mexico desert ranch house. It was there and then that the world’s first nuclear bomb core was assembled and then tested 2 miles away.
In 1965 the site was declared a U.S. National Historic Landmark and in 1984 the National Park Service completely restored the partially destroyed house and began permitting visitors to the site twice a year. All efforts were directed at making the house appear as it did on July 12, 1945, the date of the original test explosion. Using archival photos, the house and the door was restored while the original chalk text was translated, more permanently than accurately, in a parks workers hand painted rendition.
This image was created in studio by restaging and documenting a found tourist’s digital snapshot of the door in question from 2005 and is printed to the scale of the door itself.
Bio:
Peter Gazendam’s work includes sculpture, photography, video, sound, installation and drawing. His practice is a research based, critical investigation into the historical and cultural legacies of the creation and reception of objects. Gazendam is specifically concerned with the allegorical and metaphorical possibilities of material and form in tension with their contextual framework. He has been exhibited both nationally and internationally including Diaz Contemporary, Wynick/Tuck Gallery, Mercer Union, Gallery TPW and Art Metropole. He received a BFA from the University of Guelph in 2001 and an MFA from the University of Victoria in 2008. He is the former Associate Director of the Ydessa Hendeles Art Foundation and current Programme Coordinator for Artspeak, Vancouver.
