Samuel Roy-Bois
Poetic and conceptual monuments to the mundane ask us to reconsider reality.
Samuel Roy-Bois, “Presences,” 2020, installation view at Esker Foundation, Calgary
Originally from Quebec City and now based in the British Columbia Interior, Samuel Roy-Bois uses found objects and everyday materials to build poetic and conceptually driven art that questions our relationship to objects and space.
His exhibition, Presences, on view at the Esker Foundation in Calgary until Dec. 19, includes sculptures, photographs and installations created between 2016 and 2020 that blur the lines between the real and the fictional.
Throughout, Roy-Bois shifts between finely tuned balancing acts and complex structures that are meticulously constructed yet organically sinuous. The show includes seven sculptures, three installations that rely on the gallery’s architecture, and 21 documentary photographs.
Grids play a prominent role in the sculptures. Building blocks of order, they work their geometrical magic by guiding our visual perception both within and without the vertical and horizontal structures. They also act as vessels that hold or contain found objects – whether a ladder, bent metal sheets or a man’s white dress shirt.
Samuel Roy-Bois, “Presences,” 2020, installation view at Esker Foundation, Calgary
For example, in Love You, the gridded structure encases an upside-down metal garbage can. Constructed with precisely cut wooden pieces held together with small nails and glue, it becomes an undulating cage that both reveals and protects. Boundaries and vantage points shift as you move around it.
What resonates are ideas about our relationship to objects within a mediated space. What’s real and what’s not? How do we navigate and make meaning through everyday objects?
Samuel Roy-Bois, “Presences,” 2020, installation view at Esker Foundation, Calgary
The realities of social interaction during a pandemic, for instance, become eerily present in the space within the gridded, armour-like structures, and the distance established by their placement on low platforms that prevent more intimate inspection.
Objects used in the sculptures are echoed in the photographs. Mattresses balance precariously on ladders. An upside-down, boot-wearing ladder teeters on the edge of a box. Monuments to the mundane, these documented sculptures play havoc with our perception, capturing precariously balanced objects seconds before they collapse.
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Samuel Roy-Bois, “Presences,” 2020, installation view at Esker Foundation, Calgary (photo by Lissa Robinson)
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Samuel Roy-Bois, “Presences,” 2020, installation view at Esker Foundation, Calgary (photo by Lissa Robinson)
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Samuel Roy-Bois, “Presences,” 2020, installation view at Esker Foundation, Calgary (photo by Lissa Robinson)
Particularly poignant is Crocodile, an undulating wooden scaffold that both frames and shields a white dress shirt that hangs loosely within its core. The dimly lit sculpture is placed in a separate room, along with a gridded series of nine chromogenic prints that Roy-Bois produced earlier this year in Paris.
Each photograph depicts a plastic sheet, captured just before it falls to the ground. Titled based on their street location, they seem to personify ghostly forms. Erect yet ephemeral, the flimsy sheets defy gravity, creating a curious contrast that confounds expectations.
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Samuel Roy-Bois, “Presences,” 2020, installation view at Esker Foundation, Calgary (photo by Lissa Robinson)
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Samuel Roy-Bois, “Presences,” 2020, installation view at Esker Foundation, Calgary (photo by Lissa Robinson)
Such tensions are explored further in installations that use telescoping poles to press objects into the gallery’s ceiling. The unfamiliar context pushes us to contemplate their newfound aesthetic and conceptual prowess.
"Samuel Roy-Bois: Presences" is organized and circulated by the Kamloops Art Gallery. The exhibition is curated by Charo Neville, curator, Kamloops Art Gallery.
Like the photographs and sculptures, these works play on tensions between materiality and gesture. Is a mattress squished in half and shoved against the ceiling just a mattress? Or does it shift us to contemplate other meanings, like violence or human resiliency? Is an artificial potted plant just décor or is it a metaphor for how we manipulate and exploit nature?
The answers are not clear.
While the exhibition exists in the familiarity of the everyday, it also pushes boundaries by asking us to dig deeper and tackle more confounding topics related to artifice, human frailty and material consumption. ■
Samuel Roy-Bois: Presences at the Esker Foundation in Calgary from Sept. 26 to Dec. 19, 2020. The show, curated by Charo Neville, is circulated by the Kamloops Art Gallery.
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