383 Taché Hall
University of Manitoba
(Fort Garry Campus)
Winnipeg, Manitoba R3T 2M6

T. 204.474.7953
E. derek.brueckner@umanitoba.ca

Education

  • BFA Honours (University of Manitoba)

  • MFA (Hunter College, City University of New York)

Creative work & Research

Derek Brueckner is a visual artist and art educator. His recent work encompasses video harvested from socially collaborative and unscripted performances. Using a multi-disciplinary practice of drawing, painting, live feed projections, performance and video, he re-inscribes and re-imagines the human figure through his collaborators’ processes of improvisation and facilitated play.

Often Brueckner’s performance projects operate as live public laboratory spaces. Some performers will utilize his performance installations as a platform for their own work. Simultaneously collaborators allow themselves to be adapted into a context with ideas and metaphors separate from their own. Each project allows for multiple platforms to co-exist inside a larger work, with the hope of unifying various contributions of thinking, sharing, and expressing.

His work continues to combine various aspects of the process, resulting in edited videos (and sometimes paintings or drawings) that collectively reference the labour of making, experimentation, and social improvisation while simultaneously trying to acknowledge each performer’s inventive mind, voice, and body. 

Artist residencies have included spaces in Italy, Vermont, Brooklyn, New Orleans, and Toronto. Solo exhibitions and participatory projects in the US have been presented at arts spaces in Brooklyn, Queens, and New Orleans. Brueckner also co-hosts an arts talk radio show on CKUW 95.9 FM (University of Winnipeg). Media coverage of his work includes Globe & Mail, Border Crossings, Queens Courier Magazine, NOLA Defender, and OffBeat Magazine. Grants have been awarded from the Manitoba Arts Council, Winnipeg Arts Council and Vermont Studio Center. 

Education includes an MFA from Hunter College, City University of New York. Brueckner is currently an Instructor 2 at the School of Art, University of Manitoba, where he teaches a range of courses, including drawing, painting, video, other digital media, and interdisciplinary studio practices.

Arts Talk Radio Show: Eat Your Arts & Vegetables

Hosted by Derek Brueckner, Eat Your Arts & Vegetables presents guests of diverse backgrounds and perspectives ranging from local self-taught artists to internationally renowned interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary artists. The show’s mandate offers artists, curators, art academics, cultural workers and organizations a resource to promote their work and ideas in conjunction with current local art events.

Eat Your Arts & Vegetables broadcasts every Thursday from 5:30–6:00 pm CST on CKUW 95.9 FM.

Eat Your Arts & Vegetables    Recent Archive