What if every life had only five episodic markers and everything else occurred in relational links to these events? And what if we called these markers X,Y,Z,A,B? It turns out that X,Y,Z,A,B can be digitally captured and replayed in a continuous repeating six minute cycle. A dull alternating Orange-Rose light of morning followed the darkest Phalo-Blue ever experienced as night. Mid-day is always Turquoise until it changes to afternoon Purple followed by an evening Green.
X: Sleeping took place in two minutes, but it was all you needed.
Y: Work required two minutes, but seemed twice as long.
Z: Pleasure is more difficult to measure because of occurring in nano time, but it came
with such irregular synaptic frequency it most always totaled thirty seconds.
A: Gaps here and there where episodes of Mash run non-stop, Curb Your Enthusiasm is much harder to locate, Sonic Youth play another art opening, fifteen seconds.
B: Experiences of icebergs the size of your cat, arriving home to dinner, not naming, describing something you had never seen before, faking interest, shaking hands, sounds not music, air, water, love, death… the time separating you from everything else, one minute and fifteen seconds.
- Robert Youds, 2009
Robert Youds’ recent work includes a combination of light pieces and visually active objects. Youds’ art situates itself beyond the conventions of sculpture and painting, resulting in what he refers to as structures. These built structures utilize architecture, design, and picture vernacular in a way that is intended to complicate the beholders' subjective experience of the real. The material specificity of his structures opens up into sites for the illusory and poetic which extend beyond the object. This can be evidenced in one of Youds’ new light works, For Everyone a Window, which takes us through a six-minute cycle of shifting colour and time sequences that suggests a much longer durational period.
Victoria-based Robert Youds completed his MFA from York University and he holds a BFA from the University of Victoria. Recent solo shows include: TIME MUST HAVE A STOP or look out your window, at the Ministry of Casual Living; beautifulbeautiful artificial field, at the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria; small artificial fields, at the Canadian Clay and Glass Gallery; and Our Raum Licht at Diaz Contemporary. Selected group shows include: PAINT: a psychedelic primer, at the Vancouver Art Gallery; Abstract Painting in Canada, at the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia; Through the Looking Glass, at Glenbow Museum; and The Shape of Colour: Excursions in Colour Field Art 1950-2005, at the Art Gallery of Ontario.
 
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