1990 - Installation - grunt gallery, Vancouver Canada
1990 - Installation - Walter Philiips Gallery, Banff Canada (Split Tranquility)

Sculptural installation concerned with maintaining a focus between the inner and outer parameters of the gallery space. The installation involved a central concrete ring form equipped with a revolving arm traveling across the surface at one interval per minute. Microphones embedded in the form itself reverberate the sound of this motion into and out of the gallery walls. Text on the ceiling as well as a photo are combined to form a collaboration of elements which also include s a large electron microscopic image of a nerve bundle magnified several million times.

“Inside the concrete form are three microphones. In the center of the form is a motor with a steel needle arm attached. As this slowly revolves scratching the surface the sound of this action is heard from within the surrounding walls in the gallery space which have transducer speakers located inside. Text on the ceiling reads: The black hole is a region in which matter has fallen and nothing can escape. It makes it’s presence felt through a gravitational pull. Seen from the inside everything falls catastrophically and hovers only moments away. At the last moment before being engulfed one can only sense what lies behind and nothing of what lies ahead. The  name of the game is navigation. Form and text are intended to operate a a sort of graphic representation of the concept’s.” RH

Walter Phillips Gallery, May the Circle be Unbroken / Split Tranquility
Banff Centre for the Arts, Banff  Canada

“The recent deployment of Canadian military troops in such places as the Middle East, Kanasatake and Kahnawake compels us to reconsider the popular belief that our country enjoys peace. The developments of these two conflicts highlight, among other things, the breakdown of the illusion of protective discourses. Split Tranquility presents the work of two artists (Ron Huebner and Alain Paiment) exploring the tension between our craving for order and tranquility and our doubt-filled chaotic existence. At the same time, the cracked and ruptured tranquility referred to by both artists offers metaphors between celestial movements and the somberness of the present mood.”

Ron Huebner’s installation ‘May the Circle be Unbroken’ borrows from the structure of black holes. they are explained in Einstein’s theory of relativity in the following way: the passage of time is delayed by matter and speed. Allow they are allowed to exist from this theory, nothing proves their existence. It is said that nothing emerges from black holes. Stars, interstellar clouds and planets which get too close are swallowed by them. Because the structure of black holes is not fully understood, there is no consensus about the ultimate fate of material consumed by these gravity whirlpools. Matter disappears, totally engulfed.

In the tradition of landscape painting, the tranquility of the sky has evoked visions of the sublime. Huebner does not rely on celestial phenomenon as a source of contemplation. His sculpture evokes our society’s present condition, facing uncertain but unavoidable change. Huebner’s entire work probes the tension between the will to take action and apathy, the danger of action and the wish to escape the torpor of matter. The essence of this installation is based on our incapacity to move through information and reality.

Sylvie Gilbert, Exhibition Curator