Internationally acclaimed for his conceptually based practice, Bill Vazan has specialized in land art, painting, sculpture and photography for more than forty years, seeking to elucidate humans’ relationships to the environment and to the cosmos. During the 1960s and ‘70s, Vazan travelled through various cities—on foot, by car and by public transit—following very strict, self-imposed protocols, and documenting his movements in countless pictures and written notes. He systematically photographed every intersection along a major artery (Sainte-Catherine Street), and every traffic sign along one road (specifically Route 37, which loops around the Island of Montreal), suggesting a new way of surveying the urban fabric. Besides providing a novel manner of discovering or inventing the city, these projects conveyed the idea that the city is fashioned every day by the uses that citizens make of it.

Bill Vazan’s works have been extensively shown in North America and abroad, and can be seen in many public and private collections. In 2001, the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec mounted a major show of his works entitled Bill Vazan: Ombres cosmologiques. It was subsequently presented at the Kelowna Art Gallery, British Columbia (2002), the Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography, Ottawa, (2003), the Nickel Arts Museum, University of Calgary, Alberta (2004), the Centre d’exposition de l’Université de Montréal (2004), and the Musée régional de la Côte-Nord, Sept-Îles (2005). In May 2007, VOX will mount a retrospective exhibition of his work from the 1960s and ‘70s. Bill Vazan teaches at Université du Québec à Montréal.

2009 Biography in French only