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News Release

October 03, 2006

U of G Artists Selected for International Art Show

Two University of Guelph fine art professors have been selected to participate in the 27th São Paulo Art Biennial in Brazil Oct. 7 to Dec. 17. Profs. Kim Kozzi and Dai Skuse, who make up the art duo Fastwürms, share a joint appointment at U of G.

“The São Paulo Biennial means we have been recognized as important and distinguished avatars in the international/post national cultural miscegenation movement,” said Kozzi.

The biennial is a cultural event that’s been held every two years since 1951. Almost one million people visited the 26th biennial in 2004.

Fastwürms is one of three Canadian groups chosen to showcase their work at this year’s event. In total, 118 international artists will participate.

The art duo works in photography, film, sculpture, performance and installation art. In the classroom, they incorporate sound, video, images and performance, mixing art and popular culture.

In São Paulo, Fastwürms will be exhibiting Telepathacats (2003), Soylent Orange (2002) and Red of Tooth and Kaw (2001).

Some of the duo’s permanent work can be seen at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre. Their 1997 Turtle Pond features 7,500 square feet of terrazzo floor design in the south-wing entrance lobby. They have two nine-foot-high bronze Snowm’n outside the centre, as well as two fibreglass woodpecker sculptures — a 16-foot-long pileated and a nine-foot-long sapsucker — on a 100-foot-high column.

“If you drive by on the Gardiner Expressway, you can see it at night,” said Skuse. “All the woodpecker holes are illuminated from inside.”

In 1990, the Ontario government commissioned them to do an exhibition called “Ground to Ground” for the Garden and Greenery Expo in Osaka, Japan.

Here at home, members of the Guelph community are familiar with the Fastwürms’ EX OVO OMNIA, the large white spherical sculpture outside the Macdonald Stewart Art Centre that was unveiled in September 2000.