small artifical fields: Robert Youds

January 14 to March 25, 2007

The Mutual Tower Gallery

ROBERT YOUDS: small artificial fields

Light creates an emotional reaction and can dramatically or subtly alter the scene through its (lack of) illumination. For millennia, artists have been inspired by light. It has drawn them to certain locations around the world and has challenged them to capture its transience and variety in a variety of media. In the mid-twentieth century artists such as Mark Rothko attempted to capture the effects of light and colour on his canvases, without any interjection or justification of subject or narrative. The effects however of his blended and subtly elegiac colour fields nevertheless speak to the viewer of spirit, emotion and state of mind.

It is from a dual legacy – the emotional import of Romanticism and the Sublime, combined with the theoretical machinations of Abstract Expressionism - that Robert Youds creates his richly subtle and multilayered works. Originally positioned as a painter, by the mid-nineties Victoria-based artist Youds shifted his practice of translating light and colour to what he describes as "light works" or "light paintings." And it is as a painter that Youds approaches working with neon light, found objects, plexiglass and other materials in order to create the works in small artificial fields.

Late One Morning captures within its aluminum and steel framework a misty impression of the floatsum and jetsum of a night, or two, before. The reddish horizon glows with the remnants of the morning’s sunrise and purplish-blue shadows continue to hug the ground. Amidst it all the clear light of mid-day begins to assert itself, calling into the realm of clarity objects that, in the early morning light, could take on new meanings and importance. As the daylight increases, what might once have been mysterious is eventually revealed to be ordinary. It’s magic dependent entirely on how the light, the time of day, allows us to experience it.

I Feel the Air of Another Planet is almost as tall as the average person. Standing face to face with it one is drawn into another experience. The scale of this work allows the viewer to be drawn fully into an alternate experience. It is difficult not to be seduced through the melding subtleties of colour that tantalize and refuse to reveal the secretive shapes hidden within. It is a poetic interaction, rather than literal, that the artist has allowed

Friday
lights, glass, plexi-glass, mixed materials

Saturday
lights, glass, plexi-glass, mixed materials

to happen. The multiplicity and potential for open interpretation by the viewer is further reinforced through the contrasting verso side of the light-box and the gaps in the sides that allow one to see the inner constructions. While one can see how the work has been put together, not all of its secrets are revealed.

Youds often interjects humour in his works such as Advertisement for Absorption (Blue). An “eyeball” that measures 2’ in diameter is suspended from the wall. Its intense, never-blinking gaze is fixed upon whatever is in front of it. It stares incessantly, even when there is nothing to see. This can be read as a not-so-subtle commentary on contemporary society’s willingness to experience the world by watching (TV, i-pods, computer) rather than experiencing. Even when there is nothing to see, the “eyeball” doesn’t stop watching.

small artificial fields presents to the viewer opportunities to explore the potential of ways of looking and the creation of meaningful experiences from that. Careful application and arrangement of light and colour within the work provides the means of allowing for that to happen.

Robert Youds is a Professor at the University of Victoria and shows his work both nationally and internationally. He has been curated into numerous major exhibition venues including Site Santa Fe, New Mexico, the Museum of Mexico City, Mexico, the Power Plant, Toronto, the Vancouver Art Gallery, Vancouver, and most recently, the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto. Robert Youds is represented by Diaz Contemporary 100 Niagara St (at Tecumseth)Toronto, Ontario M5V 1C5 416. 361.2972 www.diazcontemporary.ca. Works on view are collection of the artist, courtesy Diaz Contemporary, Toronto.

~ Virginia Eichhorn, Curator