The Toronto artists Daniel Young and Christian Giroux have won this year's Sobey Art Prize for their sculptures, films and public art installations.
The Young and Girouz by is set in between sculpture and design: The Toronto-based artists, who have collaborated since 2002, are interested in creating designs that are made mainly out of materials purchased at Ikea and Home Depot. These objects are mounted together in a way that makes them useful as design pieces –with an unusual twist – echoing the work of minimal artist like Donald Judd.
For their installations and objects Young and Girouz reuse consumer goods, industrial prototyping methods, construction systems and componentry to produce sculptural objects that partake in contemporary architectural discourse.
By taking on modernist and minimalist ideas and combining them with products by Ikea and Homedepot, Young and Girouz are chellenging the design-for-the-masses ethos. Thereby their work becomes interesting for the debate on contemporary design and modernism.
The Sobey Art Award is endowed with $50,000 and awarded annual to Canadian artists under 40.
The awards exhibition, which includes works by all the finalists, is on view at the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia in Halifax until January 8, 2012.
