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Automatic Ruins
Automatic Ruin #4

Automatic Ruin #4   Colin Lyons | 2010 | zinc etching plates, copper sulfate, plexiglas | Courtesy of artist

Automatic Ruins #1-25

Automatic Ruins #1-25   Colin Lyons | 2010-2013 | zinc etching plates, copper sulfate, galvanized steel | Courtesy of the Artist

Automatic Ruins

Opening reception: Friday, November 14, 6 ? 9 pm
On view at SPACES: November 14, 2014 - January 16, 2015

Photo Catalogue

Automatic Ruins explores industry through the lens of fragility and impermanence. Fusing printmaking, sculpture, and chemical experiments, this project considers the possibilities after obsolescence, as well as the nature of what we choose to preserve. In these works, the etching process is pushed beyond its traditional boundaries, as a re-enactment of the rise and fall of industrial economies.

This project was born out of the impulse to give industrial artifacts the historical continuity that they were missing in the archives. It is essentially, an act of making ruins; an attempt to accelerate the natural processes of time and erosion in order to re-imagine decades of stalled history. In Automatic Ruins, historical artifacts are replicated using zinc etching plates, and then submerge in a copper sulphate etching solution. Through this process, the artifacts are gradually eroded from within, while an organic copper coating transforms them into almost unrecognizable mounds. This process evokes an alchemical creation of time, memory and historical aura.

About the Artist

Colin Lyons

Colin Lyons was born in Windsor, Ontario in 1985. He grew up in 'Canada's original oil boomtown' of Petrolia, Ontario, an experience that has fueled his interests in industrial ruins and sacrificial landscapes. His recent work fuses printmaking, sculpture, and chemical experiments, pushing the role of the etching plate beyond... go to artist page

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