The group exhibition Déliquescence brings together works by Quebec and international artists on the theme of entropy. One of the fundamental principles of physics – the 2nd law of thermodynamics – postulates that entropy represents the inevitable degradation of everything. The subject is therefore reflected upon in this exhibition through its definition as an energy that measures deterioration, quantifies the intensity of transformation from one ordered state to another uncontrolled one, quantitatively establishes a system’s degree of disorder, its capacity to change state or even its amount of instability. Whether it’s the collapse of ruins, the organic transformation of perishable materials or chemical processes that alter an object to the point of dysfunction, entropy represents the tendency of all matter and energy in the universe to evolve towards a state of disorder before reaching neutrality, inert uniformity or radical transformation to another condition.
Left to their own disruption, the result of chemical or biological mutation, fusion or melting, each of these artistic proposals submits to an evolution towards decomposition, the abandonment of its defined form and the acceptance of its dissolution.
This exhibition was inspired by my lifelong interest in industrial wastelands, which are themselves subject to a form of entropy. My fascination with their status as ruins that slowly decay over time, and my desire to reverse this trend by rehabilitating them, is part of an ongoing negotiation with this form of obsolescence. Déliquescence is also an opportunity to revisit a theme that had a profound impact on the artistic milieu of the 1970s, which used it as a conceptual and aesthetic tool, particularly in North America.