Brian Jungen, an artist with Swiss and Dunne-za First Nations ancestry, was born in Fort St. John, BC. In his practice, he uses consumer items like Nike shoes, lawn chairs and leather couches to construct installations that imitate such “authentic” First Nations artifacts as masks and tents. His more elaborate conceptual artworks combine video and audio. Jungen’s interest in sports equipment like catchers mitts, baseball bats and basketball jerseys has been motivated, in part, by the sports world’s appropriation of Aboriginal culture in team names like the Chiefs, Indians, Redskins and Braves.

Brian Jungen, an exhibition at the Art Gallery of Alberta, features three massive structures: Shapeshifter (2000), Cetology (2002) and Carapace (2009). White plastic lawn chairs and green trash bins have been cut into pieces and reassembled into the shapes of a geodesic dome, a dinosaur and a turtle. The latter are hung from the ceiling using an overhead installation style typical of natural history museums. Despite their humble origins, the sculptures manage to overwhelm the spectator with their scale and compositional complexity.

Jungen lives and works in Vancouver. Since earning a diploma from Emily Carr College of Art and Design in 1992, he has been invited to participate in more than 100 solo and group exhibitions in such prestigious locations as the Tate, the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian, Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, Vancouver Art Gallery and the Art Gallery of Ontario. He was the winner of the Sobey Art Award (2002) and the 2010 Gershon Iskowitz Prize. His work has appeared in 25 catalogues. With a practice that is at once accessible and provocative, Brian Jungen may well be one of the most reviewed artists of the past decade.

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Mia Johnson