Don Ritter

Don Ritter is a Canadian artist and writer who has been active in the field of media art since 1988. His interdisciplinary artworks and writings integrate fine art and digital media with aesthetics and ethics. Ritter’s immersive video-sound installations enable audiences to direct their experiences through body motion or voice, and his live performances and media façades present ultra high-definition video projections controlled by live music or sound. His most recent work includes large architectural projections based on the symbolism of substances and metal prints resembling road signs that convey issues of morality, sustainability and ontology. Ritter has lived in Berlin, Boston, Edmonton, Hong Kong, New York City, Seoul, Toronto, and currently in Montreal where he works as an independent artist.


"Ritter's play with his viewers' phobias recalls the anxiety-provoking tendencies of Surrealism."
Dottie Indyke, ARTnews, NYC, US

"The shock of waking up suddenly from amnesia is painful, which explains, perhaps, the psychological dislocation of perception provoked by Ritter’s art. An artistic counter-strategy of psychological dislocation for the body numbed by the invisible blows of technology."
Arthur Kroker, The Wil...

Ritter completed his graduate education in visual studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Center For Advanced Visual Studies, MIT Media Lab, and Harvard University’s Carpenter Center. His professors included German artist Otto Piene (MIT), documentary film-maker Richard Leacock (MIT), and film theorist Vlada Petric (Harvard). Ritter has undergraduate degrees in fine arts and psychology from the University of Waterloo and a diploma in electronics engineering from the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology.

Solo Exhibitions

2018 Pavillon Président-Kennedy, Partenariat du Quartier des spectacles, Montreal, Canada. Wet, architectural projection.
2011 CAN Foundation, Seoul, South Korea. Intersection.
2009 Galerija Kibela, Maribor, Slovenia. Vox Populi, Badlands and Digestion.
2005 SITE Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA. Vox Populi and Intersection.
2004 Jack The Pelican, Brooklyn, New York, USA. Vox Populi.
1999 New York Coliseum, New York City, USA. Fit, TV Guides and Intersection.
1998 Banff Centre for the Arts, Banff, Canada. Skies.
1997 Metrònom, Barcelona, Spain. Intersection and video tape retrospective.

Selected Group Exhibitions

2019 Wonderspaces, San Diego, USA, Intersection.
2017 Museum of Saint-Brieuc, France, Wet installation.
Art Rock Festival, Saint-Brieuc, France, Burning Too, architectural projection.
2016 University of Applied Arts Vienna, Austria,Sustained Signage and Unnecessary Signage.
Ars Electronica Festival, Linz, Austria, Burning Too, architectural projection.
ISEA2016 International Symposium on Electronic Art, Hong Kong. Burning Too, architectural projection.
City University of Hong Kong. Sustained Signage.
2015 AlbumArte/YI...