Robert Youds: For Everyone A Fountain
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Open Space 510 Fort Street, 2nd floor, Victoria, British Columbia V8W 1E6
Robert Youds, "For Everyone A Fountain," 2017
installation view
Meet Robert Youds at the opening reception, which will be held on Friday, November 17 at 7:00 p.m. This will be followed by an artist talk on Saturday, November 18 at 2:00 p.m.
Robert Youds’ latest work,"For Everyone A Fountain," offers an experiential, immersive adventure at the intersection of painting, sculpture, light, sound, time, and algorithm. Architectural in its initial demeanor, Youds’ latest work offers an experiential, immersive adventure at the intersection of painting, sculpture, light, sound, time, and algorithm.
“I want to be here in this room that holds the hidden and the visible simultaneously,” said Youds, “As I worked on it, the future and the past pushed inside, needing each other, yet space was going to be short. Ineffable and fleeting, For Everyone a Fountain is the best room you’ll ever know.”
For Everyone A Fountain is created out of industrial material and standardized office equipment— honey-comb aluminum, boxes, lamps, galvanized steel sawhorses, electrical cords, and power bars. Bright colours are strewn throughout the installation, lit by mesmerizing and ever-changing coloured light from forty ordinary desk lamps. The light patterns correspond to a computer’s attempt at reading and deciphering landscape photography. With this exhibition, Youds creates a metaphorical room where inanimate objects reinterpret stored images as if through their own terms.
“The fountain of colour,” added Youds, “is a lifetime of colour. We often associate memory or experiences we have to colour.”
For Everyone A Fountain is the fifth installation in an ongoing series by Youds. A previous iteration of the series, For Everyone A Sunset, was shown at the Vancouver Art Gallery’s Offsite in 2015. Youds explores the division between objects and image associations of objects, with the title referring to architect Moshe Safdie’s utopian urban planning book, For Everyone a Garden.