Flux

Robbin Deyo grew up in the suburbs of Vancouver and now lives and works in Montreal, Québec. She completed a BFA at Emily Carr Institute of Art & Design, Vancouver, in 1995 and received a MFA from Concordia University, Montréal, in 1998. Her work has been exhibited in Canada, the United States, France and Italy since 1995. Among her recent solo exhibitions are Imaging the invisible (Axeneo7, 2010), Spin (La Bande Vidéo, 2010), Flow (La Chambre Blanche, 2009) and sweet sensation (Southern Alberta Art Gallery, 2005). Group exhibitions include Artefact Montréal 2007 – Urban Sculptures, Specific Objects (Charles H. Scott Gallery, Vancouver 2004) and the 1st edition of Manif d’art (Manififestation internationale d’art de Quebec, 2000).

Montreal-based artist Robbin Deyo created Flux by hand-drawing a series of wave-like lines on metal using a modified version of a Super Spirograph. The repeating colours of blue, cyan, and red were painted with enamel, leaving areas where the grey of the underlying raw aluminum shows through. The lines in Flux are not uniform; the depth of each “wave” varies, with the deeper waves near the top of the drawing and shallower waves at the bottom, which resembles the fluid dynamics in a swimming pool. The painting is nearly seven metres wide and a metre-and-a-half tall. The painting follows the bend around the south and east walls above the sauna in the pool area. The artwork mirrors the wave-like structural design of the leisure centre. This piece is similar to a series of pencil drawings called Life’s Little Upsets , created by the artist with the same Spirograph device, which use lines to create a sense of movement and rhythm. There is an op-art quality to the images, with an illusion of undulation in three dimensions, depending on where the viewer stands in relation to the artwork.