Bibliothèque Donalda-Charron – Ville de Gatineau
Corten steel, galvanized steel
90 x 350 x 170cm
Inspired by the root networks that extend into the forest near the site, the sculpture represents an expanded section of an organic communication network.

Fabrication Lafontaine Ironwerk; Installation Infravert; Engineer Latéral

Treasure   [2020]
1083 x 1099 x 1541mm (2500mm underwater)
Exhibition Ruhr Ding: Klima
Curators Vlado Velkov and Britta Peter
Production Urbane Künste Ruhr
The negative space left by the excavation of sand over the last century by the mining industry create this lake. Not being able to visit, I asked the organization to send a sand sample by mail. The quartz sand found here emerges from the Cretaceous period, about 100 million years ago. Time disintegrates rock, grinding them into grains of sand that travel and accumulate along rivers in their beds. This sample then travels to me in Montreal. I look with a microscope at pinch of sand and find something that was invisible to my eyes. I translated this complex geometry into a solid made of many mirror planes welded together to form a monolith designed to float on the Silbersee like an ice cube. The work addresses the relationship between the new leisure-oriented usage of the site and what was previously there. Both conspicuous and furtive, the sculpture is simultaneously absent and present, visible and invisible. It disappears and reappears, blinking above the surface of the silver lake.

Produce for the exhibition Ruhr Ding: Klima, Treasure is floating on the lake Silbersee, in the Ruhr Region (Germany). I like to thanks Philipp Rohé, Julian Breuer and Stefan Göbel who install my work in my absence du to Covid travel ban in Germany. The curator Vlado Velkov and Britta Peter, and Urbane Künste Ruhr that produce my work. And Jonathan Killing for his help engineering the work. photos by Philipp Rohé and Vlado Velkov

Sporophores   [2021]
13 human scale bronze sculptures, installed on 11 sites.
Pierre Dansereau Park, Montreal

Sporophores is formed of 13 naturally oxidized bronze sculptures, reminiscent of the urban infrastructures from which they seem to be sprouting from. They bend and twist, curling up on one another and creating knots, thus binding the site’s industrial past to its new landscaping’s and natural restauration. In the vegetal world, the sporophores are the fruitification of mycelia, the visible reproductive organs of a mushroom. Mycelia are networks of subterranean bodies creating complex distribution webs that foster a sense of community and mutual aid between the various living organisms. Standing on the site neighboring the Université de Montréal’s new science complex, these sculptures draw inspiration from this organic meshwork, whose recent observation has led to show how they precede humans when it comes to networking and sharing.

Foundry Atelier du Bronze; Fondation Infravert; Engineer Latéral

Bestiary   [2021]
Bronze installed on a rock
1.6 x 1.2 x 1.8 meter
Parc des Sommets Bromont, Canada

Installed at the entrance of hiking trails in Parc des Sommets in Bromont, Bestiary is a sculpture cast in bronze and perched on a boulder. The sculpture brings together the limbs of different animals, reared up in all dimensions to form a knot at the crossroads of trails. The legs of deer, moose and horses, captured in their movement, lead to the idea of mobility, an invitation to follow the paths that crisscross the landscape and to observe surrounding flora and fauna. Bestiary presents a mysterious hybrid expressing the vital force that drives nature to grow and expand by its extremities spreading in all possible directions.

Atelier du Bronze (fonderie); Latéral (ingénieur); Anne de Broin et Dexter Barker Glenn (assistant)

Dendrites   [2017]
Corten steel, galvanized steel
9 x 12.6 x 8.2 m, 9.9 x 8.5 x 6 m
International Civil Aviation Organization Plaza (ICAO), City of Montreal

Dendrites are branched projections of a neuron, which propagate cerebral stimulation; the term is derived from the Greek dendron, also the word for tree. Two sculptures reproduce this microscopic phenomenon on a monumental scale, simultaneously evocative of large tree trunks. Climbing the steps of the sculpture allows passers-by to inhabit the landscape and reconnect with the surroundings – by climbing it’s branches they animate the sculpture much like the foliage of a tree.

Credits: Michel de Broin
International Civil Aviation Organization Plaza (ICAO), City of Montreal
Lafontaine Iron Werks Inc and Toque Innovations (fabrication);  Quantum Engineering Inc (engineer), Gabriel Rousseau (architect)

One Thousand Speculations   [2017]
Metal structure, 1000 mirrors, 5 floodlights, crane
7.9 m in diameter
Contemporary art rote of the city of Bordeaux
Curator José-Manuel Gonçalvès, Photographs par Pierre Planchenault, fabrication AF Magnum

Thousand Speculations is a disco ball of 7.9 m in diameter set with a thousand mirrors. Suspended from a crane in the sky of Bordeaux, this sculpture of extraordinary dimensions reflects the light for miles. Each burst of light makes a majestic sweep of the city, lining the walls in the night, extending its trajectory in the streets and illuminating for brief moments an unexpected detail. The work thus proposes by the light it reflects a new reading of the built heritage, or a thousand dreams to the walker. Contemplating them, these sparkles of light seem to travel like the pages of a book detaching from their binding, carried away by the wind. The word speculation comes from the Latin speculum which means mirror. The thousand speculations offer a multitude of reflections to look at.

Thresholds   [2017]
Retrieved subway doors, motion sensors, 15 x 3 x 2.3 m
KM3 – A public art program, Quartier des spectacles, Montréal

A series of doors creates a path the public is invited to follow, recalling the digestive tract’s ingestion process as the installation breathes and swells to the rhythm of the traffic that passes through it, creating a contrast between mechanical structure and organic movement. The piece repurposes the door-opening device’s mechanical innards, reactivating its technical memory, now made obsolete by the arrival of new metro cars.

Thresholds is an interactive installation that invites the general public to embark on a journey. It is a crossing that calls to mind the velocity of our urban journeys, small moments in everyday time and space.
Made up of a dozen metro car doors, the work activates in the presence of visitors. It literally holds the doors open for them as they approach and walk through it. The components come from old MR-63 metro cars, whose impact on the collective Montréal imagination is undeniable. The piece serves to keep this technological memento alive. The old cars were retired to a recycling centre, where they were ripped apart and recycled at great cost to the environment. In our consumerist society, technological objects become obsolete at an accelerated pace in a process that depreciates vestiges of the past. The technical development narrative contained in each progression is quickly undermined in disruptive chains of innovation. The parts that are reused after having been idle for some time still hold a treasure trove of, and tell a story about, human inventiveness. Dismantling obsolete mechanisms and giving them new life is fascinating because its dislocation updates human know-how and reveals where it was in terms of progress at a given time.
As visitors approach the installation, the first door opens and invites them inside. In a simultaneous sequence, the other doors give way and then close behind them to follow the movement of bodies through this transitory space. The successive mechanised opening and closing of the doors is synchronized thanks to sensors: anticipating the presence of a passenger, Thresholds sets off a fluid wave of movement triggered by an interactive system. It is a meeting and a convergence of two eras, that of integrated circuits governing the mechanical parts of a bygone one. The mechanism on each sliding door is showcased inside a Plexiglas box, so visitors can see it hard at work as they progress through the doors. Opting for transparency, the installation retains and remakes the internal mechanics of the original devices, highlighting them and reaffirming the innovation lying dormant at the heart of obsolescence.
This is not the first time de Broin revisits the mechanics of industrial objects in order to shift their function and meaning. In fact, several works come to mind: Monochrome Bleu (2003) was a spa made out of a used waste container; Keep on Smoking (2005) presented a bike on which the cyclist’s efforts literally went up in smoke; the bold Shared Propulsion Car (2005) featured a 1986 Buick Regal cruising the busy streets of New York City. The vehicle’s exterior appearance remained intact but its motor worked without fuel, having been modified to run on the energy exerted by human beings using pedals. This performative piece is a caustic statement on the apocalyptic consequences of consumerism and technical progress. Stripping these industrial objects of their paralytic statuses—whether with waste containers, vehicles or metro doors—present an opportunity to activate the speculative mechanics through which we can investigate other worlds stemming from the relics of our current environment. It is also a form of technical archaeology—modifying objects from our world is in essence formulating hypotheses about it, about its potential and its limitations, about what is possible and what isn’t, or even what is no longer possible. The process by way of which objects are made obsolete tends to defy that potential, our ability to reuse technological artefacts.
Thresholds is an interactive installation that relies on both technology and technics, but its powerful materiality is what provides a complex sculptural experience. It can be experienced from the inside or contemplated from the outside, while motionless or in motion—whatever suits one’s fancy. Whether the visitor is a passenger activating the mechanism or a spectator to the transit, what is seen and experienced will correspond to different time lapses and perspectives; the installation is subject to a dual reading. While visitors may be given the impression that the machine is molding them by opening around them without any resistance as they make their way through the piece, the passage may look, from an external vantage point, like the visitors are being swallowed, even devoured. The work is analogous to manducation, an amalgam of the installation’s mechanical aspect and something reminiscent of the organic realm.
The parallel with ingestion/digestion is echoed in the broader notion of transformation. While the installation has been assembled using subjugating devices (sensors, doors, circuits, programs), the proposed experience defies initially programmed behavioural expectations. It is inversely multiple, transformative and moving. No part of it is static, and neither is the very principle of what keeps the experience fresh.
The piece and the journey through it suggest a renewed desire for progressing though a mise en abyme of thresholds. Is it about transition toward the future or through the technical memory of its components? Or rather, it is about entering a present time where resistance is weakened and where what is seen and experienced is simultaneously affirmed and softened, offering visitors a moment in which dualities momentarily cease to oppose each other. The world opens up, every movement traversing it tearing through the fabric of time: every gesture brings forth an immediate future, already relegating the gesture’s genesis to the past. (Nathalie Bachand)

Créée dans le cadre de KM3 avec le soutient du partenariat du Quartier des spectacles, de la ville de Montréal, du ministère de la Culture et des Communications du Québec ainsi que de la Société de transport de Montréal. Curators Mouna Andraos and Melissa Mongiat; were involved in the production Samuel Saint-Aubin, Alexis Gosselin, Paul Duchaine, Pierre Fournier, Fred Monast, M.O., Generic Design, HMB Controls, Concept Paradesign.

Make Soccer Great Again   [2017]
Endless Landscape, AXENÉO7 – La Fonderie, Gatineau

Invited to intervene on a soccer field for the exhibition Endless Landscape, I seized the opportunity to redefine the game’s rules, originally codified by the British in the late nineteenth century. Make Soccer Great Again assesses the bellicose nature of the battle for the ball and proposes to change the rules by fencing the field in the borders. In keeping with Bill 1, which regulates the division of the soccer field, a white picket fence not only rings the artificial turf to delineate the territory, but divides the field up into sections, isolating the players so that they can no longer exchange the ball. The arbitrary rules are an appeal to disobedience, giving rise to a desire to jump over the barriers and overcome the obstacles in order to invent a new game.

Credits : Michel de Broin
Endless Landscape, AXENÉO7- La Fonderie, Gatineau
Aïda Lorrain and Matthew Palmer (assistants); Guillaume Ethier (photo). AXENÉO7’s team : Stefan St-Laurent, Anykrystel Coppet, Jean-Yves Vigneau, Josée Dubeau, Mélanie Myers, Mathieu Pronovost and volunteers.

Dentrite   [2016]
Steel, paint, 6,75 x 7,50 x 5,30 m
Parc Central Kirchberg, Luxembourg-Kirchberg, Luxembourg

Within the context of the Labyrinthe du Parc Central, Dendrite—a reference to the branched structure of the neurons that constitute our minds—provides visitors with the opportunity to climb above the encompassing walls of the maze, giving the chance to see the architecture of their pathway to the centre (as well as the vibrant surrounding landscape of the Plateau de Kirchberg), and, to preemptively observe their subsequent path to the exterior. The sculpture’s tree-like structure, requires visitors to choose a particular path to climb. As one ascends the stairway, they encounter a point where they must choose one path that leads directly to an observation point, or select a second pathway that then also requires a further decision. A thought in the brain travels through dendrites much like a human ascending the sculpture and both inevitably lead to the goal of processing the structures of our world. Each of its branches extends in a different direction, allowing for a panoramic view of the surrounding gardens, art works, and architecture. From outside of the Labyrinthe, visitors and passersby will be able to see the top of the tree-like form, reaching above the walls of the maze from all directions.

Credits: Michel de Broin
Fonds d’urbanisation et d’aménagement du plateau de Kirchberg, Luxembourg
INCA Ingénieurs Conseils Associés, Niederanven (engineer); A.M. Nico Betzen – Crézé, Fouhren / Saint-Jacques de la Lande (fabrication)

Interlude   [2016]
Bronze, aluminium, glass, natural gas

Interlude places a fire in the core of a remodeled television set, a tribute to it’s original domestication over 400,000 years ago. Designed for broadcasting sound and image, the television is here diverted from its primary function and transformed into a fireplace. The prefix “tele”, which means “afar”, evokes a sense of the distance produced by the device between the content and the viewer. Using a Paleolithic innovation, Interlude attempts to restore a form of immediate communication frequently interrupted by technological mediation. Unlike the devices that tend to keep us away from the event, Interlude draws people closer together around the fire, radiating without interposed media.

Bloom   [2015]
Highway traffic lights, steel, 22 x 24 x 24 m
Calgary Municipal Land Corporation, St. Patrick’s Island, Calgary

Bloom is situated in relation to existing paths throughout the island. Tilted after an elaborate polyhedron, the tall poles extend their extremities in a stellation. Like a burst of rays, the asymmetrically arranged streetlights reveal all possible outward directions as they concentrate strength inward. The projected light connects the artwork to paths on the island and, in turn, creates a node or point of focus. By illuminating important routes, the radiant shape helps the urban dweller orient themselves within the city. The sculpture introduces oblique lines in the landscape, as if the existing cityscape was folded around a center core. Bloom can also be experienced from afar as a landmark and point of orientation.

Credits: Michel de Broin
Lafontaine Iron Werks Inc (fabrication); Quantum Engineering Inc (engineer); Thomas Porostocky (photo)

Possibility   [2013]
Aluminum, paint, 5 x 4 x 6 m
City of Mississauga, Ontario, Canada

Oversized roadside signs along suburban routes advertise motels, restaurants and gas stations; they may reach the height of several stories while advertising little more than a snack bar. Their relationship to these sites is often disproportionate, which subsequently makes their sculptural qualities so appealing. The size of these arrows is not defined by the actual size of the site or object they refer to, it is rather the size of the roads and highways and the speed of passing traffic that dictates their scale. In this way the arrow can be read as the most reduced symbol of a cartographic annotation beyond scale. In the face of readily available high-definition satellite photography and street view maps, the arrow bridges the real and the virtual and creates an enhanced reality. With this sculpture the arrows do not single out anything in particular, but their density creates a place, while simultaneously signaling beyond it.

Credits: Michel de Broin
City of Mississauga, Ontario, Canada
Lafontaine Iron Werks Inc; Toque Innovations (fabrication); Quantum Engineering Inc (engineer)

Interlace   [2012]
Bricks and mortar
700 x 620 x 330 cm
Collection Changwon, South Korea

Interlace is a work created for the Changwon Sculpture Biennale and installed permanently upon Dot Island.

Tortoise Cube   [2012]
Wood, stainless steel, 346 x 354 x 391 cm

The sculpture “Tortoise” uses standard picnic tables—an immediately recognizable representation of North American leisure culture—as building blocks to transform them into an enclosing structure. ˚The ancient Roman ‘tortoise formation’ is a tactic, commonly used during military campaigns, obviously taking its principles from the animal of its namesake. Inspired by the plated carapace that protects the land turtle from predators, the military formation is a defensive architecture powered by humans. The soldiers compose their individual shields into an overall armor that protects the entire unit from projectiles.˚ Showing their undersides and using their legs in an almost defensive manner against surrounding threats, the picnic tables of ‘Tortoise’ form a fort, defining and guarding its inner space. Notwithstanding its fortified character, the wooden formation invites physical interaction especially for children who will like to crawl inside and playfully hide from adults.˚ The American symbol of leisure is turned inside out to create a sculpture that resists its essential banality, while offering a plethora of alternative uses. (Thilo Folkerts)

Tortoise Tunnel   [2012]
Wood, stainless steel, 400 x 229 x 220 cm

The sculpture “Tortoise” uses standard picnic tables—an immediately recognizable representation of North American leisure culture—as building blocks to transform them into an enclosing structure. ˚The ancient Roman ‘tortoise formation’ is a tactic, commonly used during military campaigns, obviously taking its principles from the animal of its namesake. Inspired by the plated carapace that protects the land turtle from predators, the military formation is a defensive architecture powered by humans. The soldiers compose their individual shields into an overall armor that protects the entire unit from projectiles.˚ Showing their undersides and using their legs in an almost defensive manner against surrounding threats, the picnic tables of ‘Tortoise’ form a fort, defining and guarding its inner space. Notwithstanding its fortified character, the wooden formation invites physical interaction especially for children who will like to crawl inside and playfully hide from adults.˚ The American symbol of leisure is turned inside out to create a sculpture that resists its essential banality, while offering a plethora of alternative uses. (Thilo Folkerts)

Majestic   [2011]
Street Lights, steel, lights, 12 x 12 x 10 m
Collection of the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa

Originally produced as a satellite project for the New Orleans Biennale, Majestic has now been permanently installed at The National Gallery of Canada. The work is constructed from lamp posts uprooted during Hurricane Katrina. Reassembled around a core made from steel, the street lights are resurrected. The work explores notions of horizon, equilibrium and entropy, while referencing the sense of solidarity with which residents of New Orleans rebuilt their city.

Credits: Michel de Broin
National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa. Gift from Donald R. and Beth Sobey, 2012.
Made in conjunction with the international biennial Prospect.2, New Orleans (2011); Third of May Arts Inc. (curator); Infravert (fabrication, restoration and installation); Art Metal Studio (assistant, fabrication).

Mehr Licht   [2010]
Street lights, steel structure, 14 x 16 x 17 m
Kunst-am-Bau Wettbewerb für den Deutschen Bundestag, Marie-Elisabeth-Lüders-Haus, Berlin

Suspended in the courtyard of the Marie-Elisabeth-Lüders-Haus building in Berlin, which contains the Parliamentary Library and Archives for the nearby Reichstag, Mehr Licht is a new addition to the collection of the Bundestag (German federal parliament). While jewels and decadent ornaments would typically adorn a chandelier, Mehr Licht is alternatively composed of a collection of distinct street lights, each indicative of a distinct civic aesthetic. The flat horizon has been folded and the streetlights, ordinarily vertical, are variously tilted; a cityscape is collapsed and reassembled to create a satellite, suspended in space. Projecting outward from a composite core—a polyhedron is formed from the agglomeration of different streetlight-bases as the long arms of the sculpture extend into a stellation. Mehr Licht is a tug of war between an inward tension, drawing strength toward the centre, and an energetic burst of rays, radiating outward. The asymmetrical assemblage expands light in all directions, gesturing past the walls of the courtyard and building to various points throughout the city; a refraction of Goethe’s last words, Mehr Licht (more light).

Credits : Michel de Broin
Marie-Elisabeth-Lüders-Haus, The German Bundestag, Berlin
Thilo Folkerts (project manager and curator); Fitkau (fabrication)

Revolution   [2010]
Steel, 8 x 5 x 6.5 m
Collection Art Norac, Rennes, France

With its 40 meter path, Revolution is comparable in length to a 5 story staircase. Housed in the Couvent des Jacobins, the sculpture takes its inspiration from a spiral stairway. By forming a knot, the metal stairway deconstructs the symbol of vertical ascension with which it is normally associated. Here, one enters an infinite cycle of revolutions where everything rises only to descend according to the rhythm of evolution and transformation. The visitor can climb up the stairway, physically experiencing the idea of an eternal return, existing in a time loop where what comes is similar to what returns.

Documentation, 00:55

Credits: Michel de Broin
Collection Art Norac, Ce qui vient, second edition of Ateliers de Rennes, Biennial of contemporary art; Raphaële Jeune (curator); Sarl Crézé (fabrication).

One Hundred Paces   [2010]
16-mm film, b/w, silent, 2 min 30 s

Film shot on the sculpture Révolution, installed in the cloisters of the Couvent des Jacobins in Rennes, France. The 100-foot film is the same length as the path traced by the staircase.

Revolution   [2010]
Steel, 47 x 49 x 45 cm

Monument   [2009]
Granite, 230 x 150 x 150 cm
The City of Winnipeg Collection

Monument is a mystery that will never be entirely revealed. One can recognize its classical motif borrowed from the tradition of monuments but disrupted from the passivity of the academy. It announces itself as an invitation to an experience where the meaning is projected by the passerby onto the white screen of the veil covering the characters’ enigma.

Credits: Michel de Broin
La Maison des artistes de Saint-Boniface, City of Winnipeg
Acknowledgments: Charles Brunet Monuments, Daniel Ellingsen.

Cut into the Dark   [2010]
Video HD, Blu Ray, colour, sound, 4 min. 2 sec

A protagonist cuts down a lamppost with a chainsaw. The operation lasts several minutes before it tumbles to the ground. In the roar the lightbulbs shatter and instantly plunge us into darkness. The darkness left by the absence of light allows a shadowy zone to emerge where one can from now on better observe the night.

Credits: Michel de Broin
Pascal Grandmaison (camera, editing); Fréderic Bouchard (second camera); Jean-Francois Lessard (actor); Louis Dumontier (prop master); Ariel Dumontier and Gerald Sainte-Marie (prop); Alexandre Poulin and Stephanie Laoun (assistants); The Montréal Film and TV Commission.

La Maîtresse de la tour Eiffel   [2009]
Mirror ball suspended by a construction crane, 7.5 m in diameter
Nuit Blanche 2009, Luxembourg Gardens, City of Paris

La Maîtresse de la tour Eiffel is a giant mirror ball, made of one thousand mirrors. Suspended by a construction crane against the Paris skyline, the monumental installation reflects light in all possible directions for miles around. The glistening, fragmented light it produces transforms the landscape and creates a new experience of the city. Each sparkle dances in the night to the downtempo rhythm of the rotating ball, scanning walls, mapping trajectories in the streets and illuminating unexpected details for a fleeting moment. Single glimmers of light scatter across surrounding buildings much like pages torn loose from a book, flying away with the wind. The spectacular view of the starry sky has long been a source of delight and curiosity, but the abundance of artificial light in urban areas produces a glow that obscures the stars. The largest mirror ball ever produced, La Maîtresse was suspended from a construction crane 60 meters above the ground to render starry sky for the citizens of Paris for a night in the Jardin du Luxembourg during Nuit Blanche.

Credits: Michel de Broin
Nuit Blanche, Ville de Paris.
Alexia Fabre and Frank Lamy (curator);
 APC + AIA (production); SAF Magnum (fabrication); Émilien Châtelain and Jean-Marc Charles Perretti (photographers).

Arch   [2009]
High performance concrete, stainless steel, 280 x 472 x 127 cm
Floralies Gardens, parc Jean-Drapeau, Notre Dame Island, City of Montreal

Arch represents a curved tree whose canopy seeks the soil of its origin. Commissioned to commemorate Salvador Allende, and by extension the Chilean community, this sculpture acts as an open metaphor, evoking the respected politician’s words: “I am sure that the seed that we now plant in the dignified conscience of thousands and thousands of Chileans cannot be definitively buried […] History is ours and the people will make it.” The circular line that draws the arch can be seen to further suggest an organic relation between the past and the present, as well as a site for circulation, meditation, and contemplation. Its presence in the park creates a subtle and effective formal dissonance with the surrounding trees.

Overflow   [2008]
Water, pump, bassin, furniture and rubbish
Variable dimensions
Nuit Blanche, Toronto

In the ruined remains of the old central Toronto prison chapel, demolished in 1920, water pours down as a continuous flow, like a torrent gushing out of the third story window. The building’s contents, pieces of furniture and electrical goods, have spilled out and are now lying on the ground in the form of debris. The overflow opens up the old detention center, unable to retain this excess.

Lustre   [2008]
C-print, 115 x 75 cm
Kunstencentrum Vooruit, Gant (Belgium)

The project consists of digging out lampposts along the street to form a gigantic chandelier suspended in the sky by a crane. At the end of the day, the crane operator hoists up the chandelier. Whilst the construction workers sleep, the Chandelier illuminates the night.

Encircling   [2006]
Asphalt, yellow paint, road sign, 14.8 x 21.9 m
Scape Biennale, Christchurch, New Zealand

This public artwork adopted the urban language of street signs, asphalt and road markings to create an irregular circular road in North Hagley Park. Its ironic system absurdly redirects traffic into a never-ending circuit on a road to nowhere, thus undermining the usual objective of maximum practicability in urban design and planning.

Credits: Michel de Broin
Susanne Jaschko (curator)

Shared Propulsion Car   [2005]
Modified automobile body, pedals, seats and candles, 510 x 183 x 139 cm
FRAC Poitou-Charentes Collection, Angoulême

All the parts of a Buick Regal 1986 deemed to be superfluous— engine, suspension, transmission, electrical system—were removed to reduce the vehicle’s weight to a minimum while keeping its appearance.  The body was then equipped with a mechanical system made up of four autonomous pairs of pedals, enabling the passengers to form a self-propelling group.  A transmission was created in order to transmit the power generated by the passengers to the driving wheels and to provide gears in order to ensure that they are engaged in sequence when starting up. With this modified car, capable of reaching up to 15 km/hour, resistance to the culture of performance has been taken to an unprecedented level.

Shared Propulsion Car   [2005]
2:48, Hell’s Kitchen NYC

Shared Propulsion Car   [2007]
3:48, Toronto
The video shows the driver of  Shared Propulsion Car being pulled over by Toronto Police on Queen Street West in Toronto. The revolutionary vehicle provides the illusion of the mass-produced luxury automobile, but is now reduced to a shell. This unique car needs no petrol, produces no toxic emission and is not responsible for the innocent people killed for petrol in the Middle East. Furthermore, in this individualist society, this convivial car was proposed as a good solution to bring people together and take over the street. Dean Baldwin, the driver, took the steering wheel with his fellows Elaine, Dave and Dan and drove the car smoothly on the streets. The public was enthusiastic, and sympathized with the drivers. They drove nine blocks, from Lisgar to Strachan, before being pulled over by the police. They had to wait for 30 minutes in the car, while the policemen tried to determine exactly which law was transgressed. They settled on “operating an unsafe vehicle” and a tow-truck was called.

Credits: Michel de Broin
FRAC Poitou-Charente Collection, Angoulême.
Exhibition: Exit Art, New York, 2005; Mercer Union, Toronto, 2007; Le Confort Moderne, Poitier, France, 2011; the FRAC Poitou-Charente Collection, Angoulême.
Michel de Broin (direction); Frédéric Rousseau (mechanics).
Acknowledgments: Tim Gilman, Frantiska Sevcik, Jacques de Broin, Che Bourgault, Dave Dyment (curator), Frédéric Rousseau (mechanics).

Keep on Smoking   [2005]
Bicycle, generator, battery, analogue gauge, smoke machine
100 x 85 x 60 cm
Bitforms, New York, NY, USA

The bicycle transforms the kinetic energy produced by the cyclist into smoke. The cyclist’s will to power is a source of renewable energy, recycled by a generator that transforms physical effort into enough electric current to activate a smoke machine. This work is the result of the marriage of two machines: one produces while the other consumes. This “copulation” between machines generates smoke, which escapes freely into the atmosphere.

Keep on Smoking   [2005]
Bicycle, generator, battery, analogue gauge, smoke machine
100 x 85 x 60 cm
Bitforms, New York, NY, USA

The bicycle transforms the kinetic energy produced by the cyclist into smoke. The cyclist’s will to power is a source of renewable energy, recycled by a generator that transforms physical effort into enough electric current to activate a smoke machine. This work is the result of the marriage of two machines: one produces while the other consumes. This “copulation” between machines generates smoke, which escapes freely into the atmosphere.

Smoke  [2011]
2:50 video
Recorded in an Estonian cemetery

Superficial   [2003]
Mirrors, glue, cement
290 x 523 x 475 cm
Produit par le FRAC Alsace et Langage Plus, France

Invited to participate in an exhibition exploring the notion of transparency, I chose to envelop a large stone, tucked away deep in the Alsatian woods, with fragments of mirror. In this play of splintered radiance, the rock disappears within its reflections.

Réparations   [2004]
PAL video
11 min. 26 sec
Collection of the National Gallery of Canada

Discarded bottles found scattered about whilst out walking are resurrected into the sky of Paris. Reparations – A Re-evaluation of Waste – is an interventionist action in which used soft-drink bottles are recycled and transformed into rockets. The ballistic device is made out of a bicycle pump, making it possible to compress a mixture of air and water in the bottles. After a certain amount of vigorous pumping, and the pressure in the bottle reaches its climax, the bottle explodes and its pressurized contents escapes freely. The bottle is thus transformed into a veritable rocket and propelled into the sky.

Documentation, 11:27

Revolutions   [2003]
Aluminum, 500 x 500 x 850 cm
Collection of the City of Montreal, Parc Maisonneuve-Cartier, City of Montreal

This sculpture was inspired by the winding exterior staircases central to Montreal’s architectural identity. By forming a knot, the staircase deconstructs the symbolism of vertical ascension with which it is usually associated. Here, the staircase enters an endless cycle of revolutions, in which whatever goes up must also come down.

Credits: Michel de Broin
Public commission from the city of Montreal, Parc Maisonneuve-Cartier, city of Montreal.
Che Bourgault (fabrication); Guillaume Labelle (geometry); Nicolet, Chartrant, Knoll, and Jean-Pierre Thonney (engineer); Louis Dumontier (foundation)

Blue Monochrome   [2003]
Garbage dumpster, epoxy paint, metal ladder, pump, filter, water, light, heating system
218 x 225 x 158 cm
Collection du Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec

The inside of a used garbage dumpster has been waterproofed with a blue substance. Equipped with a pump and a filtration system, the work purifies and makes available its contents: more than 1,000 litres of filtered and chlorinated water. Powerful jets of water stimulate the sensorial experience.

Stick to Resist   [2003]
Electrical magnet, battery, keyboard, electro-luminescent diodes, charger, carrying case
18 x 29 x 20 cm
Collection of the National Gallery of Canada

This sculpture, equipped with a battery and a memory, has a degree of autonomy and can stick to any metallic surface thanks to its high-capacity electrical magnet. It has an electronic signature, which enables the user to arm and disarm the magnet. Without the identification number needed to activate it, it is impossible to move this sculpture, which is solidly installed in a public space. When the electrical magnet is activated, a clock shows how long the batteries will last.  The work, by resisting, manifests its presence and stands solidly, all by itself.  The countdown recalls a time bomb but unlike it, when the countdown is over, the electrical magnet falls to the ground.

Épater la Galerie   [2002]
Graphite and tempera on paper, (9x) 30 x 21 cm
Villa Merkel/Bahnwärterhaus, Galerien der Stadt Esslingen, Germany

Colossal arrows have been erected alongside buildings in order to indicate to passers-by the precise location of things: “it is here”. These arrows are often disproportionate with respect to the places they designate, for their scale is defined not as a function of the importance of the indexed site, but is rather determined by the velocity at which the viewer travels through urban space.

An arsenal of luminous arrows was installed to invade the museum. This use of a stereotypical symbol of North-American consumer culture reverses our usual relationship with the institution. Here, the exhibition space becomes the object on view, run through and altered by all these arrows, which frame it and designate it as an object.

Épater la galerie   [2002]
Graphite and tempera on paper, (4x) 30 x 21 cm

Épater la Galerie   [2002]
Thermo-retractable plastic, wood and fluorescent light, variable dimensions
Villa Merkel, Esslingen am Neckar, Germany

When, in North America, the automobile became a lifestyle—more of a mode of social circulation and exchange than a mere means of displacement—space and perspective had to be reconsidered so that the automobile could be recognized as the new subject, just as was the subject of the gaze in the classical era for politics, art, and culture. Mercantile culture thus invented a mode of designation directly transposed from the flat surface of geographical maps. Rather than having a word associated with a place on a map, enormous arrows were incorporated onto the sides of buildings to indicate precise locations to the automobile driver: “Here it is”. These arrows are often disproportionate in relation to the places they designate. They can be several stories high and yet may only designate a french-fry stand, as their scale is defined not by the size of the designated object, but by the speed of the automobile, the width of the roads and the necessity of transforming the traveled land into a map laid before the driver’s eyes. Today, these arrows are but archaic and useless vestiges of of pedagogical era. Every driver knows how to read signs; there’s no need to remind him constantly him that “Here, there is…”

But why not respond to this albeit useless creativity of the commercial sphere in that of art, where we are precisely in need of being told, now that we are in the dark as to the meaning of art:” Look here, this is it, there’s art here”. Michel de Broin’s artistic intervention, as does an assault or an invasion, encompasses the museological space of arrows, in order to identify the very place of art. But the arrows traverse walls, space, they disappear and criss-cross one another. Where does the art space begin? Where does the art begin? Within the museum walls or outside them? Are we at once “in” the art as soon as we step inside the walls? Is everything art within the assigned limits? The monumental arrows find functionality in the composition of new, fluid, moving, immeasurable spaces. And the visitor—himself a delocalised point—is the only remaining point of convergence of all the designations; he finds himself compelled, in his displacements, to produce these often impossible spaces according to the will of the arrows and according to this young artist’s desire and his game. Without any predetermined route, the viewer will be led to reconstruct the partially provided arrows, following the walls, looking out the windows, exiting the gallery to follow them in their traversal of the walls.

After all, what could an arrow along a wall possibly designate? The wall itself, the configured space, the service offered, the food served, the satisfied belly of the consumer? The commercial arrow is quite conceptual already. Art only reveals it by attaching to it the paradox of pleasure. The artistic arrow appears suddenly more concrete, now that it has been redirected from its function, as we can follow the trace, travelling along it, looking with eyes and body for the destination. It becomes incarnated in our movements and questioning. One could even argue that it posits the visitor as subject, not of the gaze, but as subject of displacement and configuration. And around this subject, the arrows, thus situated, allow the veritable spreading into the material space of all spaces, even the most paradoxical, that can be conceived of either geographically or mathematically.

This project follows an earlier project the artist developed around a road sign featuring a full black square indicting dangerous materials (SKOL, Montreal, 1999). There again, according to a revelatory schism, it was the functional sign that appeared abstract and conceptual while its artistic counterpart, referencing the pure and empty forms of abstraction in art, took on suddenly an ironic, concrete, functional and pathetic incarnation. Today, largely thanks to his double and paradoxical competence, both pragmatic and conceptual, Michel De Broin becomes engineer, and suggests another machine for producing concepts. The machine works on a system of suction and expiration through which a form turns inside out like a glove. It transforms the inside into outside in one immanent movement, according to a solid dialectic, and allows us thus to see in the work concepts as essential to the logic of thought as those of the ensemble, inclusion, exclusion, limits, inside, outside

For lack of really knowing whether conceptual work still holds any meaning today, we can at least console ourselves—about the death of art, the end of history, or even the destruction of philosophy—by telling ourselves that after all, “it works”. But the beauty of these projects resides perhaps in that their conceptual complexity fades quickly—leaving only the delight in the mechanism—as if we, artist and visitor alike, were brought back to the intelligence of childhood, to an era where thought is deployed in all its entirety in actions, in motivity, the exploration of the environment or in assembly.

Jean Ernest Joos
Translated from the French by Janine Hopkinson

Hole   [2002]
Modified trailer, wood, plaster and plastic
360 x 240 x 240 cm
Collection du Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec

A hole barely large enough for one person to enter was pierced through the back of a trailer. The hole was installed temporarily in various Montreal neighborhoods.

Solitude   [2002]
C-print
152 x 203 cm

A trailer hanging from a crane above an urban area in order to allow a spatial and temporal retreat, suspended in time and in space.

Entrelacement   [2002]
Asphalt, pictogram sign, paint
27 x 16 m
Canal Lachine, Montreal

An additional segment extends a bicycle path along the Lachine Canal in Montreal. The design of the asphalt path is the product of an awkward gesture which, when reproduced large scale, counters the functional logic of urban facilities.

Drunken Brawl   [2011]
NTSC video 4:3, silent, monitor
5 min. 35 sec.

Three beer cans battle it out in an air vent’s enclosure. They challenge and shove each other, separate and take up their battle once more, provoked by unexplained forces.