19.11.2021 - 13.02.2022
The 5th International Digital Art Biennial (BIAN), organized by ELEKTRA
Arsenal Montreal
2021.05.08 - 2021.06.07
Ruhr Ding: Climate
Urbane Künste Ruhr, Germany
2020.02.09 - 2020.08.30
La main du magicien dans la froide lumière du jour
Musée d'art contemporain des Laurentides, Canada
2020.06.25 - 2020.11.08
Zero Emission
Museum Leipzig, Germany
2020.03.17
Courant Vert
Espace EDF, Paris
2020.02.11 - 2020.05.12
Thresholds
Palais des Congrès de Montréal, Canada
2019.10.31 - 2019.12.08
Montréal ~ Habana : Rencontres en art actuel / Encuentros de Arte Contemporáneo
Havana, Cuba
2019.09.09
Poetry Lies In Between
CityLeaks Festival Center, Cologne, Germany
2019.05.20 - 2019.05.24
CoExistence
2019 ICRA-X Robotic Art Program, Palais des congrès de Montréal, Canada
2019.05.04 - 2019.07.13
Revolution
Biennale d’architecture et de paysage Versailles, Paris
2019.03.08 - 2019.04.13
Salle des maquettes
Galerie de l'UQAM, Montreal
2019.02.07 - 2019.05.18
Bonne conduite
Angoulême, France (FRAC Poitou-Charentes)
2019.02.20 - 2019.06.09
Thresholds
Âjagemô art space, Ottawa (Canada Council for the Arts)
2018.11.02 - 2018.11.04
Man Ray, Michel de Broin, Juliette Goiffon & Charles Beauté
Artissima, Turin (Galerie Eva Meyer)
2018.10.20 - Work in progress
Deviations
Vancouver Biennale, Vancouver
2018.09.13 - 2018.11.17
La conduite des conduites
Galerie Division, Montreal
2018.07.07 - 2018.08.12
Natura Loci
Magasin Général, Sainte-Madeleine-de-la-Rivière-Madeleine
2018.03.26
Michel de Broin & Kim Gerdes – Machines organiques, machines textuelles
École Normale Supérieure, Paris, France
2018.03.08 - 2018.04.17
Elective affinities
Galerie Division, Montreal
2017.08.17 - 2017.10.15
Thresholds
KM3 - A Public Art Event, Quartier des spectacles, Montreal
NEWS ARCHIVES

2016.10.16 – 2016.12.25
This and That
Division gallery Toronto

An emphatic turn towards objects, the non-human, things, and their meaningfulness has swept contemporary philosophical discourse. Despite our phenomenal relation to everything we see and everything we touch (and what touches back, felt or not), a noumenal relation colours our world—or at least the discourse surrounding it. And so, it seems we must learn to thread a newly demarcated, yet unknowable, realm filled with objects personified, openly at play.

For the past two decades Michel de Broin has set up his studio in this shadowy world where objects and their social dramas are chief actors. While our current moment asks us to imagine the inanimate personified, de Broin has been doling out objects that lay bare their machinations over the course of his prolific career. These sculptures do not go so far as to dance on their own, much like Marx described the fetishized commodity doing, but their plastic, metal, painted shells certainly cannot contain their forms. Performing beyond their expected function, albeit poorly at times, these unsuspecting cousins demand a longer consideration than those objects bound to their meaning. In tour de force a tire wrapped into a concentric knot cannot power any motor vehicle, while no less recalling the immense and unknowable force of a black hole.

This and That’s accretion and accumulation of images and objects belies the vertical thrust of possession. Everywhere we turn a non-systemic torrent of relations is at play, connecting objects in an indeterminate network, one that bridges de Broin’s career from past to present. This uncanny field where objects are in conversation, confronting one another through a shared language of dysfunctionality, is one carved by alternative paths to meaning and value. -Loreta Lamargese

2016-tt-001-michel_de_broin
Blowback, 2013, Steel, 10m x 4m x 4m

2016-tt-004-michel_de_broin
Core, 2016, Forton, wood, paint, wax, aluminum

2016-tt-003-michel_de_broin
This and That, 2016, Cyanotype

2016-tt-006-michel_de_broin
Head, 2016, Aluminium plated forton, painted wood base

2016-tt-007-michel_de_broin 2016-tt-008-michel_de_broin 2016-tt-009-michel_de_broin
Moon Watcher, 2016, Forton, fiberglass, headlights, aluminum frame

2016-tt-010-michel_de_broin 2016-tt-011-michel_de_broin
Drunkated I, II & III, 2016, Bronze

2016-tt-017-michel_de_broin
2016-tt-018-michel_de_broin
Étant Donnés, 2013, Sink, plumbing pipe, water, propane gas

2016-tt-020-michel_de_broin
May Be, 2016, Aluminum, plaster, cushion

2016-tt-021-michel_de_broin
This and That, 2016, Metallic objects, thermoform on wood panel

2016-tt-015-michel_de_broin2016-tt-033-michel_de_broin
Dog Fight, 2014, Cement, polymers, aggregates, nylon fibers and steel structure

2016-tt-023-michel_de_broin 2016-tt-027-michel_de_broin 2016-tt-026-michel_de_broin
Endangered Species, 2016, Forton, wood, wax, steel, gold leaf

2016-tt-029-michel_de_broin
Sandbank, 2016, Light box

2016-tt-030-michel_de_broin 2016-tt-031-michel_de_broin
Logged On, 2015, Wood log, electromagnet, neon bulb, steel beam