Seuils
Nathalie Bachand, Conseil des arts du Canada
Mécanismes entropiques et appareils remodelés : Michel de Broin et l’inconscient technologique
Daniel Sherer, Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal
Les châteaux de sable
Michel de Broin, Inter, art actuel #130
Entre le possible et l’impossible
Nathalie de Blois, Musée national des beaux arts du Québec
Sculpture of Steel, City of Nerves
Bernard Schütze, Espace art actuel
Michel de Broin at Bitform Gallery
Darren Jones, Artforum
Michel de Broin
Bryne McLaughlin, Art in America
Disruption From Within
Rodney LaTourelle, Plug-In ICA
La disspiation sur le virage
Laetitia Chauvin, Esse
A Logic of Being Against?
Bernard Lamarche, Parachute
Entrevue
Michel de Broin, Etienne Zack, Mass MoCA
Michel de Broin BMO Project Room
Bryne McLaughlin, Canadian Art
Montreal’s Retired Metro Cars Are Staying Busy
Mark Byrnes, City Lab
Where is Michel de Broin?
Anne Schreiber, Art Net Magazine
Interview with Michel de Broin
Regine, We Make Money Not Art
Une oeuvre monumentale
Éric Clément, La Presse
Construire des chateaux… Dans le ciel de Toronto
Éric Clément, La Presse
Michel de Broin: une oeuvre publique à sauver
Éric Clément, La Presse
Castles Made of Sand
Bryne McLaughlin, BMO project Space
Le vivre ensemble
Annie Gérin, Presses de l’Université Laval
Un électron libre aux confins des genres
Jérôme Delgado, Le Devoir
Danger awakens the senses: An interview
Oli Sorenson, MKOS
Un Michel de Broin un brin solennel mais redoutable
Benedicte Ramade, Zéro deux
Bright Matter
Sarah Milroy, Canadian Art Magazine
Michel de Broin
John K Grande, Border Crossings magazine
Cities of Light
Bryne McLaughlin, Canadian Art Magazine
Michel de Broin: From Mad Scientist to Pied Piper
Shannon Anderson, Canadian Art
Une éternelle semence
Jérôme Delgado, Le Devoir
Michel de Broin at Mercer Union
Alex Snukal, Uncubed Magazine
Énergie réciproque
Bénédicte Ramade, MacVal
Pièces à conviction
Marie-Ève Charron, Le Devoir
Neue Heimat
Bernard Schutze, Berlinische Galerie
L‘art comme conspiration
Jean-Ernest Joos, ETC Montréal
Propulsion and entropy
Bernard Schutze, C-Magazine
Reverse Entropy
Thomas Wulfen, Kunstlerhaus Bethanien
Objeux pour Objoies: l’attrait de l’imprévisible
Stephen Wright, Semaine
Épater la Galerie
Jean-Ernest Joos, Villa Merkel
L’espace public mis à nu par l’artiste même
Jean-Philippe Uzel, Spirale
Résistance?
André-L. Paré, Etc. Magazine

Disruption From Within, Rodney LaTourelle

Plug-In ICA

 

For his first solo exhibition in Western Canada, Michel de Broin presents recent work in various media. His art may take many forms, from traditional sculpture to installations, actions, and video, but it always employs a rupture in the logic of a particular convention, whether it is an object, situation, or process. Perversions, detours, and odd juxtapositions are strategies that repeatedly appear in his work, which uses the combination of unrelated systems in order to expose overlooked preconceptions.

De Broin is concerned with the issue of ‘resistance’, a working concept that often uses physical systems as metaphors for larger power structures. For de Broin, ‘power’ can be simultaneously conceived in terms of a political imbalance as well as brute energy. The forces of desire and idiosyncrasy are used to short-circuit the flows of power to produce solutions for unasked questions, an immediately obsolete mode of production that addresses existential human needs rather than serving a relentless consumer culture. For example, in Keep on Smoking II (2006-2009), a bicycle was modified so that the cyclist produces the energy required to power a machine that releases thick smoke through an exhaust pipe. The harmless yet unexpected smoke from this bike creates a ‘reverse’ discourse that frames issues such as fuel consumption, ecology, and bio-power in a humorous and delightful way.

Shelter III (2009), is a work constructed from ten tables joined together around a central void. Here de Broin turns an object normally associated with production, display, and communal interaction into a construct for the intimate and the secret. Bleed to death (2009) is an impossible object that continues de Broin’s subversion of everyday devices and tools. In this work, it seems as if a power drill has pierced itself, producing holes from which water springs. Produced specifically for the Plug In exhibition, Décolonnisation I, II, III (2009), is a triptych of oil on canvas that concerns the particular quality of the Plug In exhibition space. DeBroin uses painting as a means to re-arrange the architectural elements of the gallery, presenting the unavoidable but usually overlooked columns in the space as fallen elements of a picturesque composition. Like Bleed to death, the work can be seen as a critique and perversion of a typical symbol of virility, and serves to concentrate the overall strategy of negation that is evident in the exhibition. There is an enigmatic cohesion to Disruption from within that not only makes it a highly aesthetic and compelling collection, but also allows everyday objects, and in turn everyday life, to achieve an almost mytho-poetic status.

De Broin’s ‘negative’ strategy is also evident in another new project specifically conceived for Winnipeg at Le Jardin de sculptures, at La Maison des artistes visuals francophones in St. Boniface. To be inaugurated on the 17th of September, Monument is an uncompromising extension of de Broin’s concerns into new territory and a real coup for Winnipeg. Inspired by the characteristic snow that blankets the city in winter, and influenced by the sense of mystery and poignant obfuscation in the work of Guy Maddin, Monument uses traditional sculptural motifs in an unprecedented way. The work, which is composed of two veiled figures sculpted in granite, acts on the visitor at a level beyond representation, opening a space between individual identity and human anonymity, between public and private, and between forms of visibility.

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