Doug Foster has created a new showreel featuring highlights of his exhibitions and projects from 2006 to 2019. The video gives an insight into the breadth of Foster’s practice, which combines his training in the technical aspects of animation, lighting and camerawork, his research into the human visual system, and his experiments with installation and projection.
Foster is well known for his complex video works, often presented as installations, which transform footage taken from nature or urban landscapes into hypnotic abstract compositions designed to stimulate primal areas of the brain. Doug Foster 2019 demonstrates the mesmerising complexity of these compositions and their capacity to transform physical sites into spaces of reflection and of sanctuary.
Two of the works shown in the video are released in December 2019 as new iterations on Sedition. Digital editions of Chimera (2011) and The Heretic’s Gate (2010) are now available as part of the Sanctuary Spaces collection. Both works reflect on transformation and transcendence, sanctuary and redemption, and are derived from installation pieces shown in cavernous spaces. Chimera was originally presented as part of Lazarides’ The Minotaur exhibition at London’s Old Vic Tunnels and explores the process of metamorphosis and the emergence of life-forms from the genetic soup in which we all swim. The Heretic’s Gate was originally displayed at St Michael's Church in Camden as part of a Daydreaming With... exhibition curated by James Lavelle. The work represents Dante’s entry point into the Sixth Circle of Hell, where non-believers burn for eternity in furnace-like tombs.
Foster’s latest installation work, a piece made for the 2019 exhibition Beyond The Road, follows on from these projects. Sanctuary is an immersive exhibition and album produced by PUNCHDRUNK and UNKLE which was shown at London’s Saatchi Gallery earlier this year. Sanctuary transformed a wooden Southern Gothic ‘chapel’ space with mesmerising audiovisual projections.
Other works featured in the video are Dormouse (2017), The Marvel (2017), Beyond the Infinite (2016), Fortuna’s Wheel (2016), and MOONLAND (2013). The music accompanying the documented artworks is Satie's Gnossienne No1 performed by Krystyna Foster.
