Laurent Sfar: Fontaine, Bousillé 2 (#e), Traffic

Exhibition

April 21 – May 20, 2006
Artist’s Talk on Saturday April 22 at 2pm

Project Description

Produced in partnership with Centre de production Est-Nord-Est in Saint-Jean-Port-Joli, the exhibition by French artist Laurent Sfar integrates pieces created during a residency there last summer to new versions of works produced previously. Motivated by a keen interest in social environments, the artist reappropriates everyday objects and explores constructed and architecturally structured relationships. In this, his most recent version of the sculpture object titled Bousillé, he furthers an investigation of the idea of the game; here it’s table tennis, and as a device thwarts the ball’s return, players/visitors must spontaneously renegotiate the rules of the game.

The videos Fontaine and Traffic develop their own moments of fleeting constraint, this time by thwarting habits of the gaze. Relationships to time and space are reconfigured to reveal the possibility of imagining, of doing things differently. The absurdities in the representations afford us a sensorial experience of playful confrontation with commonsense and social conventions.