50 Light Fixtures from Home Depot

Christian Giroux & Daniel Young: 50 Light Fixtures from Home Depot (2010): Still from a colour video. Courtesy Mercer Union, Toronto; Diaz Contemporary, Toronto; and the artists.

Christian Giroux and Daniel Young:
50 Light Fixtures from Home Depot
Mercer Union
To March 6.

Toronto-based duo Giroux and Young’s “50 Light Fixtures from Home Depot” video is just what it says it is. The artists purchased, and then installed and uninstalled, in a white cube of a room, 50 light fixtures that are currently available for sale at the home renovation store of the title. Over the course of the video, each light fixture clicks on and is recorded for a few seconds. The video becomes a portrait of “white light” and all the variations that entails, from truly stark white to shades of ‘white’ tinged with blue, yellow or green. But, it also starts to feel like a bit of an art history lesson told through lighting fixtures, from the rococo flourishes of the chandeliers to the Dan Flavin-esque neon tubes to the fixtures that flood the room with coloured light like a rudimentary Olafur Eliasson installation. After each light switches off, viewers are left in the dark with the lamp’s ghost-image burned into their eyes, which barely fades by the time the next light is presented.  This effect ties the video into the theme of  “eclipse” that informs the group exhibition showing concurrently, featuring works by Kristan Horton, Euan Macdonald, Marie Jager, Elizabeth Zvonar, as well as the magical short film “Hand Held Day” (1974) by American Gary Beydler, in which, though the use of stop-motion photography, an entire day passes before viewers’ eyes in approximately six minutes.