Simon Fraser University
Engaging the World

^{Samuel Roy-Bois: Not a new world, just an old trick. Installation view, SFU Gallery, 2013. Photo: Blaine Campbell.}

Samuel Roy-Bois: Not a new world, just an old trick

September 14 – December 14, 2013
SFU Gallery

Samuel Roy-Bois’ practice is concerned with the conceptual and physical definition of space. Questioning the boundaries between art and exhibition or production spaces, his works are as much about the space outside of the structures as those they enclose. His constructed spaces are strategies to communicate complex ideas and experiences to the viewer.

For SFU Gallery, Roy-Bois has created a new work: a large-scale model for an imaginary building. The work, Not a new world, just an old trick, proposes that it exist both as an edifice and sculpture, and connotes an idea of the art gallery or museum. The rough, tiered form is not only an architectural amalgam that offers the potential of housing collections, but it also functions as furniture. Viewers may climb the model’s various levels and enter its interior. The interior contains works from the SFU Art Collection from Lalique to Donald Judd. The model is makeshift and suggests an author, or perhaps an inhabitant. The installation also includes a series of ink drawings that are part of the artist’s ongoing practice in which he makes visible imagined architectural forms, proposals and impossibilities.

Roy-Bois is a Vancouver based artist. He has a BFA from Université Laval, Quebec and a MFA from Concordia University, Montréal. His work has been shown across Canada and internationally including at Langara College, Vancouver; Artspeak, Vancouver; Parisian Laundry, Montreal; Southern Alberta Art Gallery, Lethbridge; Republic Gallery, Vancouver; Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver; Point éphémère, Paris; Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal; Quartier éphémère, Montreal; and Or Gallery, Vancouver. He is faculty at UBC Okanagan.

Curated by Melanie O’Brian

Events

Opening Reception
September 14, 11am – 1pm. Breakfast, mimosas and live Dvořák.

Lunchtime Exhibtion Tours
Wednesday, September 25: Melanie O'Brian, SFU Galleries Curator/Director
Wednesday, October 16: Marianne Robinson, SFU Galleries Work Study Student
Wednesday, October 30: Christina Hedlund, SFU Galleries Collection Manager
Wednesday, November 13: Sarah Carr-Locke, PhD Candidate in Archaeology, SFU
Friday, November 29: Adriana Contreras, SFU Galleries Coordinator
**All tours start at 12:30pm, except October 16, which will start at 2:30pm.

Panel Discussion
Not a new world, just an old trick: Narrative, Architecture and Art
Samuel Roy-Bois, Robert Kleyn, Leslie Van Duzer
Tuesday November 12, 6pm 

World Art Centre, SFU Goldcorp Centre for the Arts
149 West Hastings Street, Vancouver BC

Within the context of Samuel Roy-Bois' current installation, Not a new world, just an old trick at SFU Gallery until December 14, this panel will unpack the dynamic between built environments and the fictional narratives suggested by architecture and art.

The gallery, typically the white cube, is understood as an architectural and intellectual frame that determines the activities and interpretations of a space. Roy-Bois' work acknowledges the institutional spaces of contemporary art while building within them, recreating them, testing their spatial politics and underlining a visual art experience meant to destabilize our accepted knowledge of said spaces. Roy-Bois' large-scale model for an imaginary gallery at SFU Gallery proposes that it exist both as an edifice and sculpture. The tiered form is not only an architectural amalgam that offers the potential of housing exhibitions and collections, but it also functions as furniture upon which visitors can walk, read and ultimately enter. The interior contains 49 works from the SFU Art Collection from Lalique to Emily Carr to Donald Judd.

Roy-Bois, architect Leslie Van Duzer and artist/architect Robert Kleyn will consider the role of the built work in instituting a narrative for the viewer; how architecture leads the viewer in galleries and museums; and how one might, or might not, distinguish between architectural spaces and the spaces created by art.

Samuel Roy-Bois is a Vancouver based artist. He has a BFA from Université Laval, Quebec and a MFA from Concordia University, Montréal. His work has been shown across Canada and internationally including at Langara College, Vancouver; Artspeak, Vancouver; Parisian Laundry, Montreal; Southern Alberta Art Gallery, Lethbridge; Republic Gallery, Vancouver; Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver; Point éphémère, Paris; Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal; Quartier éphémère, Montreal; and Or Gallery, Vancouver. He is faculty at UBC Okanagan.

Robert Kleyn is a Vancouver based artist and architect. His work has been exhibited at the Vancouver Art Gallery, Blanket Gallery, Catriona Jeffries Gallery and Belkin Satellite in Vancouver, Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna in Rome, and White Columns in New York. Kleyn studied architecture at UBC in the early 1970s and apprenticed in Rome, working in architecture, film and theater, while doing projects with international agencies such as the UN Environmental Program in Africa, Asia and the Middle East. He lived in New York in the early 1980's, returned to Vancouver in 1990, then taught architecture at the University of Detroit and the University of Michigan while working for several Detroit firms. Currently he practices architecture in Vancouver as Robert Kleyn Architect. He is a frequent guest at design studios in Vancouver, Toronto, New York and Phoenix, and has served on the Rome Prize and Venice Biennale juries. His writing has been published in Canadian Art, Vanguard, Tema Celeste, Z|G, Capilano Review, Framework, and elsewhere.