BUILT

Robin Collyer

The exhibition runs from March 6 to April 12, 2008
The gallery is open from Tuesday to Saturday, from noon to 5 pm

Opening on Thursday, March 6, 2008 at 5 pm
in the presence of the artist

BUILT is a selection of Robin Collyer’s work from the past thirty years. This exhibition is an opportunity to examine the movements, points of overlap, coincidences and divergent paths running through the concepts and media Collyer has used. More specifically, and without aiming to be a retrospective, the exhibition reveals the way in which photographic concepts inform, one might even say sustain, this sculptor’s work. BUILT is an encounter between two aspects of one artist’s work, in which a kind of hiatus highlights the characteristics of each.

What we might call the subject of the representation in Collyer’s work is often directed towards a conceptual reading of form and content. The series Transformer Houses clearly embodies this paradox: these “houses” conceal electrical installations too perfectly integrated into their environments — environments which, in Collyer’s photographs, take on the appearance of sculptures. In other photographs, Collyer erases text (or, as in the series Magazines, substitutes the text with lorem ipsum, that tool of graphic design devoid of all semantic value) to alter our references. Rubbing out words rubs out their meaning, the primary function of a text. This minimal and negative gesture, despite being almost sculptural, pushes the work towards formalism. Nevertheless, the purity of the image gives it its critical force and, by means of a curious reversal, solidly anchors the manipulated image in a discourse on meaning.

This encounter and slippage from one medium’s concepts to another are particularly eloquent in the work Most Violent Places in the World. For this monochrome sculpture, 26 layers of styrofoam were piled up like floors of a building. Each layer shows the layout of a typical apartment in one of the twenty-six most dangerous cities in the world. This sculpture, in its extreme sobriety, employs a rich conceptual and formal approach while having an emotional impact on the viewer. In this sense, Most Violent Places in the World is emblematic of Collyer’s work.

Robin Collyer studied at the Ontario College of Art and Design at the end of the 1960s. His sculptural, installation and photographic work has been widely shown in North America and Europe and is part of numerous collections. Collyer is interested in urban and suburban areas and in the inscription of text and architecture at their core. He represented Canada at the XLV^th Venice Biennale. His works have been exhibited at the Oakville Galleries, Museum London (London, UK), the Art Gallery of York University (Toronto), the Art Gallery of Ontario (Toronto) and at FRAC (Orleans, France). In 2000, The Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography (Ottawa) devoted a major exhibition to his photographic work. Collyer has also carried out many public art projects, including Canopy, incorporated to the new building of the Canadian Embassy in Berlin.

Dazibao thanks the artist for his generous collaboration and its members for their support. Dazibao receives financial support from the Canada Council for the Arts, the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec, and the Conseil des arts de Montréal. Dazibao is a member of the Regroupement des centres d’artistes autogérés du Québec.