ENCOUNTER | 2010 | site specific installation | AXENEO7, Gatineau, Canada | Mixed-media installation. Aluminium map gold, sound device, 15‘ loop, masonite peforated hardboards, objects: MDF. white glossy paint. mirrors, recycled stainless steel tubes

Collaboration with Florine Leoni

«The proposition ENCOUNTER of Sylvain Baumann and Florine Leoni grew out of a situation in which they found themselves, in the underground food court of an Ottawa shopping mall. The place exuded discomfort and monotony of the kind we are faced with daily, to the point of no longer being aware of it. Gyms, waiting rooms, large office spaces schematically subdivided, public thoroughfares—those spaces whose function is to organise their users—are employed by Sylvain Baumann and Florine Leoni to enquire into the nature of the human model that was considered when they were constructed. Their work consumes to its very boundaries the space at their disposal by rendering human posture precarious in the extreme. They thereby suggest the limits of our compatibility with the environment which we ourselves have created (or organised). Their work does not attempt to reproduce a specific place; on the contrary, it is a synthesis of these different spaces, through which is presented a critique of the physical and virtual structures which impose on us behavioural guides.»
Jonathan Demers . Director of AXENÉO7.