Kevin Schmidt

An interdisciplinary artist working across performance, video, photography and installation who has exhibited widely across North America and Europe, Schmidt is perhaps best known for performance expeditions and interventions into the natural world, which are documented in photographs, installations and videos.

Schmidt addresses the tensions between man and nature, performance and document and indoors and outdoors, combining notions of the heroic with the seemingly amateur by using visible reminders of artistic construction and theatrical devices—smoke machines, stage lights and DIY photographic equipment. Schmidt’s works are often situated in remote locations, where he stages remarkable events that add elements of urban culture to untouched natural contexts, such as Aurora with Roman Candle, which shows him firing roman candles at the aurora borealis, and his eleven-and-a-half hour long Epic Journey, which documents a marathon night-time screening of the Lord of the Rings trilogy in a small boat as it drifted down the Fraser River. In this way, he simultaneously examines both the seductive elements of contemporary cultural production and the constructions that surround the idea of nature.

The first monograph dedicated to Schmidt, this publication features essays by Charo Neville, Kathleen Ritter and an artist interview with Nigel Prince.