Michel de Broin, Nu, 1998, archival ink jet print, face mounted under plexi , 126 x 171.5 cm, 1/ 5, edition of 5
Pierre-François Ouellette art contemporain gallery is pleased to present the solo exhibition entitled "Lost Objects" by Michel de Broin from March 5 to April 17. Meet the artist: Wednesday March 23 from 6:00 to 8:30pm. "To lose sight of the object allows one to enter a non-objective world, where nothing can be objectively verified or shown. The facts are no longer facts, words no longer have referents, images are altered. Inobjectivity is a world free of objects and, consequently, of any real constraints."
For his new exhibition, Michel de Broin is presenting his sculpture Dedans dehors (2002) for the first time in Canada. Animated by a refrigerator pump, the work has the ability to turn over and flee the gaze of the other. Rather than cool the air, the altered appliance expires and inspires softened sculpture through an opening in the gallery wall. When spectators enter the exhibition space, their gaze cannot size up the anthropomorphic form; it in-forms itself and holes up. It will stay there until the visitor leaves.
A series of drawings, Anthropometrie (2004), helps make up for the disappointment. It consists of a reading grid into which holes have been pierced. If the Cartesian framework was invented to measure the world, the roughly-hewn holes in the grid allow one to slip into it while avoiding the calculation. Finally, the photograph of a nude — Nu (1998) — reveals a free space that opens voluptuously in a Montreal Metro station. A fine protective membrane, torn from the sensitive surface of a plastic sheet, allows one to imagine nudity as that which escapes prescriptive control. The free space thus revealed offers a kind of breach in normality, free of all intentionality and signification. Objet perdus shows almost nothing, a nude, holes, and a soft sculpture that escapes our grasp. There may be a loss or a gain in freedom when the object is lost; that's what the artist is attempting to work out in this new project. The artist would like to thank: Jean-Michel Ross, Stéphane Beaulieu, Jacques de Broin, Mike Paten, Eve K. Tremblay, Andreas Baur, Brigitte Morhardt-Ehrlicher, Galerie Villa Merkel, Allemagne.
ARTICLES
Lamarche, Bernard. Le Devoir, "Briser la logique", Saturday April 2 and Sunday April 3, 2005, E8
Delgado, Jérôme. La Presse, "Traces majeures", Sunday March 27, 2005, p17
Mavrikakis, Nicolas. Voir, "Va-et-vient", March 24 2005, p53