Jegan Vincent de Paul
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“In the last quarter of the twentieth century we have the dubious privilege of seeing both the beginnings of the human romance with things, in the distant past, and also its possible end, in the all too imminent future. For the first time in history there is increasing awareness that the resources of energy that have fueled material expansion are finite and that their desperate pursuit threatens the continuation of life on the planet. The modern culture of materialism, or the belief that the ultimate goals of personal life can be fulfilled by things and sensations, is losing credibility in the face of facts. It is not merely ideology but accumulating empirical evidence that forces us to reevaluate our relationship to objects. Whether humankind will heed the evidence and respond to it adaptively by redirecting its goals is perhaps the most important question for our survival”
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi & Eugene Rochberg-Halton
The focus on everyday objects is the reality of both contemporary art and the broader culture at large. How do simple objects of utility currently exist simultaneously as critical devices and collectors of arbitrary meaning? Jegan Vincent de Paul’s theory based art takes a scientific approach towards the reception and production of contemporary culture. His work reinforces the idea that cultural meaning be rooted in concrete realities rather than in abstract private notions.
Currently, his creative projects focus on the ecology of visual signs found in urban environments to comment on the myth of domesticity as founded on materialism. While his current ideas and projects focus primarily on Western cultures, his aim is to consider the Global Village as the space for future artistic production and critique.
Jegan Vincent de Paul was born in Sri-Lanka in 1978 as the middle child of the five children of Margie and John Vincent de Paul. He emigrated to Canada in 1986 and has lived in Toronto over extended periods while considering many other metropolitan cities his home. While not being nationalistic or identifying himself with any specific cultures, he loves the idea of being Canadian.
