Chroma Tower No 1

About Chroma Tower No 1

The striking metal towers of the Chroma series are stacked frames of glass that change colours and images as sunlight shines through them. Inspired by a background in photography, Ryan Van Der Hout has created a series of compelling minimalist sculptures that illustrate the effects of light and motion on lenses. While the Toronto born artist has been taking photographs since age 16, and created several sculptural images using digital photography, they only learned how to weld metal in 2020. An apprenticeship over several weeks in the studio of one of Canada’s foremost sculptors Shayne Dark followed.

“Each sculpture becomes something of a static camera, documenting the many changes in the scene around it.” Ryan Van Der Hout

An interdisciplinary artist Van Der Hout’s work focuses on ‘navigating stages of being such as grief, undoing and queer becoming.’ They have a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Photography from Metropolitan University and have been supported by the Ontario Arts Council. Van Der Hout’s work has been widely published in The Huffington Post, Vogue Italia, Fortune Magazine, Larry’s List, CBC and Readers Digest and PhotoEd magazine. Their photo-based work was part of the AGO’s Collector’s series and has been exhibited in the U.K., New York and in Canada. They have created public art for the Toronto Archives, The TTC, Nuit Blanche in Toronto and Pemberton Developments. Van Der Hout is currently an MFA Fine Arts candidate at Parsons, the New School in New York City.