Erratic Room | Lyla Rye, 2013

Solo exhibition curated by Shani K Parsons and presented at TYPOLOGY Projects, Toronto

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Erratic Room (video installation), 2013
2-channel video projection (DVD), mirror apparatus, stereo audio
Duration and dimensions variable

One wants a room with no view, so imagination and memory can meet in the dark.
— Annie Dillard

Featuring an immersive video installation and new limited edition photo series by Lyla Rye, Erratic Room is an exploration into spatial perception and its often hidden physical and psychological effects.

Throughout human history, dark rooms have occupied a spectral presence in our imagination and memory, and even in today’s brilliantly illuminated world we continue to spend a significant portion of our lives within them. From the theatre to the bedroom, we enter or invest these anomalous spaces with feelings of anticipation, trepidation, fantasy or fear. In the dark, where space becomes boundless and untenable, our most imaginative selves take centre stage, enacting our innermost desires and deepest dread.

Featuring altered projections of architectural and urban apertures, enclosures, edges and experiences, Erratic Room’s imagery constitutes an off-kilter vision of the world just beyond our walls. Out-of-sync sounds, unmoored from the images and actions they originally corresponded to, reverberate with an echo or foreshadowing of past and future uncertain events.  Simultaneously delimiting and expanding the boundaries of the space it occupies, Erratic Room begets a similarly confounding effect upon our imaginations and memories. From our cloistered vantage point within the darkened room, the enveloping projections assume the form and function of apparitional windows on an unsettled world.

The Erratic Room Print Series is the physical embodiment of the ideas Rye explores in the ephemeral installation. Conceived as a sculptural photo edition, the series features four light-filled moments from the Erratic Room projection sequence, each of which has been carefully selected, printed, and mounted between curved supports within a custom wood box frame. 

Like the installation, the edition hovers between two and three dimensions, playing with the viewer’s spatial perception in its warping of both image and support. Printed on glossy fine art paper, the works are highly reflective and responsive to ambient light and the surrounding environment in a way that makes them truly site-specific: the constantly changing reflections and shadows playing across the photographic surfaces are considered by the artist to be integral to the images.

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Erratic Room (print series, from left to right: Window, Stairway, Doorway, Gate), 2013
Archival inkjet print on Ilford Smooth Gloss paper, curved support, wood
14 x 14 x 2 inches each
Edition of 3 each

Erratic Room exhibition catalogue (cover shown) and limited edition archival digital print, both produced at a size of 6 x 9 inches and in an edition of 25 copies. Signed and numbered by the artist. Available for purchase at shop.criticaldistance.ca, or view/read online here.