Se sortir (fugue)

Se sortir (fugue) is an installation conceived for a specific site on the Laval territory, namely a residential neighborhood currently in development and bordered by a large untouched semi-forested area. The work is located on 100e Avenue between rue Couturier and avenue Louis-Payette, in Laval. A sightseeing telescope installed on the boulevard transports the viewer to an abandoned lot in the distance, whose only landmark is a wooden structure. To see it clearly, the viewer must look across a strip of urban construction and part of the vacant lot. As a proposal for running away or escape, the project ultimately aims to reflect on the latter: “In the realm of the built environment, Se sortir (fugue) opens wide to the un-built environment.”

Statement

Maxence Gras is interested in the tension that exists between the urban environment and uninhabited areas. The thin line between these two entities is the main subject and chosen medium of the artist. His interventions often reactivate these non-sites from an aesthetic, operational and social level by offering different ways to consider them:

The colonization and organization of a territory are the best mirror a society has to understand itself.

For the artist, trying to immerse a social element in spaces that reject it from the outset is in itself a motivational element that inspires an off-site approach to working. Gras develops tools, objects, furniture, or simple markers or flyers that allow viewers to stop and reflect on these sites. The artist proposes an act of resistance through the designing and crafting of objects and alternative furniture that encourages a deeper reflection on the meaning of site.