Samuel Roy-Bois, Polarizer (self-portrait), 2009

POLARIZER | SAMUEL ROY-BOIS
03.14.2009 | 04.26.2009

The work of Samuel Roy-Bois resists easy categorization, freely mixing drawing, painting, sculpture, performance, music, architecture and literature to create large-scale installations at once cool, complex and mysteriously affective. In many of his works the viewer is compelled to enter and activate seemingly quotidian environments constructed from and filled with everyday materials and mundane objects, yet infused with ethereality and the lure of the imaginary.

Roy-Bois is deeply interested in the action of the audience, persuading us to take notice of how we move, perceive, engage and affect a space. His visitors have climbed, crawled and danced, walked softly, felt the reverberations of their footsteps or gazed quietly as constellations of stars moved across their body. There is a theatrical, performative response that surfaces unexpectedly in his audience and it is an engaging, if not exhilarating, experience leaving little doubt that Roy-Bois harbours some romantic tendencies. One cannot help but sense his distinctly poetic reminder that life is a journey with adventure and uncertainty round every bend, should one choose to push forward.

Samuel Roy-Bois is a Vancouver-based artist, originally from Quebec City. He acquired his BFA from Université Laval in Quebec (1996) and a Masters Degree in Fine Arts from Concordia University in Montréal (2001). His installations have been shown across Canada and internationally at the Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver, Point éphémère, Paris, Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, 2006; and the Or Gallery, Vancouver.

This exhibition is organized by the Southern Alberta Art Gallery (curated by Ryan Doherty) in partnership with the Robert McLaughlin Art Gallery (Oshawa) . Funding assistance from the Canada Council for the Arts, the Alberta Foundation for the Arts and the City of Lethbridge

Gallery photos by David C. Miller