T O U R I N G E X H I B I T I O N S

Samuel Roy-Bois

Musée d’art de Joliette, Joliette, Québec
June 18 to September 5, 2022

Curated by Anne-Marie St-Jean Aubre, Curator of Contemporary Art, Musée d’art de Joliette, and Charo Neville, Curator, Kamloops Art Gallery

Québec artist Samuel Roy-Bois, who has lived in British Columbia for the past 15 years, presents select projects from two independent bodies of work. First exhibited at the Kamloops Art Gallery in 2019, The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State (2016–2019) is a series of photographic sculptures Roy-Bois made from things he found on a property in Germany in 2016, during an artist residency at Künstlerhaus Worpswede. Realized with the help of his children, who balanced the found objects and then quickly disappeared from the camera lens, this series presents momentary, precariously composed sculptures that exist only long enough to be documented. Suspended for the brief opening of the camera shutter, the sculptures are only experienced by the viewer through the photographs. As improvisational and incidental photographic sculptures, they push up against our understanding of temporality and the certainty of concrete existence.

Samuel Roy-Bois

Esker Foundation, Calgary, Alberta
September 26 to December 19, 2020

Curated by Charo Neville, Curator, Kamloops Art Gallery

Samuel Roy-Bois’ practice is concerned with the conceptual and material definition of space and the ways the built environment and manufactured things contribute to our understanding of the world. Through sculpture, site-specific installation, and photography, Roy-Bois examines relational networks of objects and their complex philosophical considerations: How do we define ourselves through the creation of structures? Is it possible to conceive of one’s existence outside any material linkage? We make things, but are things also making us?

For this new body of work, Presences, Roy-Bois has created an ensemble of constructed and found objects that consider our contemporary material knowledge. His discrete architectural sculptures act as vessels for everyday things and are separated from the gallery’s architecture by platforms. This series of site-specific improvisational installations present everyday objects in new ways, blur the boundaries between art and life, and shift ordinary things and spaces into a poetic dimension. By connecting sculpture, everyday objects, floor, and ceiling, Roy-Bois manipulates the gallery space as a strategy to create a genuine and direct relationship with the viewer, and his use of everyday items offers a way of understanding our relationship to our environment.

Samuel Roy-Bois: Presences is organized and circulated by the Kamloops Art Gallery. Support for the development and production of new works for the exhibition provided by Esker Foundation.