Colin Lyons
Colin Lyons grew up in the birthplace of the North American oil industry, Petrolia, Ontario. Fusing printmaking, installation, and chemical experiments, his work employs the chemistry of etching to reflect on geoengineering, extraction, alchemy, and brownfield remediation.
His current project began with what may seem an absurd question: What might our climate-engineering technologies look like if they were designed by alchemists? However, instead of practical climate solutions, these prototypes lay bare the folly of our desire to find salvation in the fine balance of strategic chemical spills. He attempts rituals of transmutation for our most base material - industrial waste - blending the sacred and scientific to question what kind of nature we hope to approximate within a techno-solutionist future.
His most recent site-based installations have been located in sacrificial landscapes such as mine tailings, decommissioned landfills, historic flood infrastructure, brownfields, and remote islands, where he develops speculative contingency plans for the post-extraction landscapes we leave behind. Lyons has participated in recent fellowships and residencies at MacDowell, The Arctic Circle Residency, ÖRES, Frans Masereel Centrum, Rabbit Island, Interlude, The Grant Wood Fellowship, Klondike Institute of Art & Culture, and Kala Art Institute.
Colin Lyons grew up in the birthplace of the North American oil industry, Petrolia, Ontario. Fusing printmaking, installation, and chemical experiments, his work employs the chemistry of etching to reflect on geoengineering, extraction, alchemy, and brownfield remediation.
His current project began with what may seem an absurd question: What might our climate-engineering technologies look like if they were designed by alchemists? However, instead of practical climate solutions, these prototypes lay bare the folly of our desire to find salvation in the fine balance of strategic chemical spills. He attempts rituals of transmutation for our most base material - industrial waste - blending the sacred and scientific to question what kind of nature we hope to approximate within a techno-solutionist future.
His most recent site-based installations have been located in sacrificial landscapes such as mine tailings, decommissioned landfills, historic flood infrastructure, brownfields, and remote islands, where he develops speculative contingency plans for the post-extraction landscapes we leave behind. Lyons has participated in recent fellowships and residencies at MacDowell, The Arctic Circle Residency, ÖRES, Frans Masereel Centrum, Rabbit Island, Interlude, The Grant Wood Fellowship, Klondike Institute of Art & Culture, and Kala Art Institute.
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