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Visual Arts by Kay Burns Kenny Doren May 12 to June 24 Truck Gallery The 29th floor of a shiny granite and glass corporate office tower is an unusual place to find an artist’s studio. However, multimedia artist Kenny Doren appears remarkably comfortable with his downtown office/edit suite where he works with Attitude Pictures, a post-production facility for the development of broadcast-quality video and media productions. In an unusual and enviable relationship with his boss, who is a strong supporter of the arts, Doren is able to access this high-end equipment for the creation and production of his own artwork. Truck Gallery is providing an opportunity to view the incredible diversity of this artist in a mini-retrospective from May 12 to June 24. Originally, an exhibition of Doren’s new project, Monarchy Suite for Birth, was scheduled to open at Truck in April, but insufficient funding – and a rather terrifying toboggan accident that resulted in Doren breaking his neck and sternum – forced a change of plans. As such, the public is now given this chance to see a cross-section of Doren’s work. The retrospective contains a video station to view past works, an audio station, some of his earlier prints, the installation Crusading that was shown in Montreal in 1998, and some of the working components in progress for Monarchy Suite. Conceptually, much of Doren’s work stems from his response to news and media in a context where both traditional ideas and contemporary technology are explored. In Crusading, for example, a large newspaper image of Dr. Luigi Bella, the Italian doctor who claims to have found the cure for cancer, is "intravenously" fed video and audio, which then return from the doctor through speakers and a television monitor that incongruously plays back the image of a young girl singing quotes of Dr. Bella. The connections between the issues, the controversy, the young girl and the words are multiple and up to the viewer to make. One of the videos available for viewing is the performance documentation of Allegro molto con brio king kong, a digital opera for dance composed by Doren, choreographed by Danielle McCullough, with libretto by Doug DeRoche. Doren digitally reworked Beethoven’s ballet music, "The Creatures of Prometheus," and the resulting event becomes a myth for our time. The allusion to the Greek myth of Prometheus, the dance, the writings, the operatic voice – all blend together in a dynamic way that addresses pop culture and television. It is a mesmerizing work and well worth the 40 minutes of viewing time. One of the most intriguing aspects of all of Doren’s art is his working process. He consistently works in collaboration with others – dancers, choreographers, writers, costume designers, musicians, etc. This is achieved not through the more traditional form of theatre collaboration, which consists of a group of artisans working towards the vision of an artistic director, but through working with and integrating the visions of others toward the development of true collaborative experiences. It is a skill and sensibility that many artists and performers find hard to achieve, but in Doren’s productions there appears to be such a fluid melding of artistic ideas that the works hold together not due to an overriding individual’s style, but with a rare consolidated multiple vision.

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