Christian Giroux and Daniel Young

The team of Christian Giroux and Daniel Young makes works that cross the aspirations of high Modernism with the banality of consumer culture. Interested in the production of space, their new installation, 50 Light Fixtures from Home Depot, is an extension of the filmmaking strategy the pair used for their 2008 project Every Building, or Site, that a Building Permit has been Issued for a New Building in Toronto in 2006. Like its predecessor, this 35mm film features multiple views of a familiar subject—in this case 50 store-bought light fixtures. If the premise seems banal, the end result is captivating.

A single light fixture is displayed in a bare room. After eight seconds, the light is switched off as the film cuts to black, leaving a brief afterimage. After four seconds in darkness, another light fixture comes on for eight more seconds. The sequence is repeated 50 times. Filmed over a period of three weeks, each fixture was installed, tested and filmed within a temporarily constructed room that was 10 feet wide by eight feet deep, with an eight-foot-high ceiling. The unfurnished room conformed to our notions of the white cube, but also suggested a newly renovated domestic space. The film is projected at 1:1 scale onto a specially constructed eight-foot-high by 10-foot-wide floating screen that frames the presentation. The projected room recedes into an illusionary space that seemed to extend beyond the back wall of the gallery.

The 13-minute sequence featured a selection of florescent fixtures, recessed lighting, flush mounts, wall sconces, pendants, halogen tracks and the occasional chandelier, all purchased (and eventually returned for a full refund) at Home Depot. The 50 fixtures are representative of the numerous products on display in the lighting department. According to the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, nearly $21.3 billion was spent on home renovations in 2008. The scores of fixtures on display evoke the rapid growth of the home improvement market and the inclination of homeowners to renovate and redecorate their living spaces.

Home Depot operates on economies of scale. The representative sampling of fixtures in the film only scratches the surface—for instance, 453 ceiling mount fixtures and 348 pendant fixtures are listed on the company’s Canadian website. Big-box retailers are dependent on a vast, integrated system of centralized shipping and distribution, which benefits greatly from the low cost of manufacturing abroad in countries like China, where the majority of these fixtures originated. In the context of an economic downturn and weak housing starts in both the United States and Canada, it is easy to read the abundance of products in the film as a commentary on the pitfalls of consumerism. And while Giroux and Young are certainly critical of the subject matter, their projects are never that reductive.

Besides the Moravian Star pendant that casts a spectral web-like shadow (Hampton Bay Model: 17656-016, if you’re interested), many of the light fixtures are inconspicuous. Any one might just as easily be found in a typical suburban home or a trendy downtown loft. We have no stake in them as objects. If anything, the different models start to look the same after a while, but pay closer attention. Look past the familiarity of the fixtures. What the film really captures is the differing qualities of light cast by the wide assortment of fittings employed. Ranging from soft white to amber, cerulean and teal, the gradations illuminate and offset the monotony of a seemingly endless parade of commodities. Recalling the application of white on white in a formalist painting, the subtle gradations of shade, tone and colour produce a spellbinding perceptual effect.

The installation uses light as both its subject and medium, capturing the similarities, differences and warmth radiated by the various incandescent, florescent and halogen light bulbs. This is underscored by the use of 35mm film stock, which is itself a medium predicated on pilfered light. It is worthwhile to consider how flat and lifeless this premise would have been had the pair elected to use video instead of film. The scratches that occur while running the film through the looping mechanism lend the work a heightened sense of historical vérité. In this context, the film starts to function as a readymade time capsule—an anthropological document of contemporary living conditions.

Despite its corporate pedigree, the light cast by the 50 fixtures ended up feeling familiar and welcoming rather than repellent. Radiating from one fixture after another, each light elicits difference in the face of conformity. Giroux and Young transform what could have been a rote conceptual exercise into a surprising rumination on the nuances of this most plain signifier of modernity and habitation. ❚

“50 Light Fixtures from Home Depot” was exhibited at Mercer Union in Toronto from January 22 to March 6, 2010.

Ivan Jurakic is a visual artist and Curator at Cambridge Galleries.