The beauty of decline

Fonderie Darling’s newest exhibition features works reflecting on the themes of entropy and obsolescence.

The Déliquescence exhibition by recently-retired founder of the gallery Fonderie Darling Caroline Andrieux explores entropy in art in her last curated project.

Déliquescence showcases the work of a variety of international and Quebec-based artists. The exhibit’s theme is entropy, the degradation of all things, or decline into chaos. Every piece showcased presents signs of degradation, decomposition, or transformation, either chemical or biological. Andrieux wanted to display and emphasize the beauty and poetry of obsolescence through art.

“I have a profound interest in ruins, and I’ve explored it through my practice as a curator and as a location rehabilitator,” said Andrieux. “I am fascinated by the ineluctable transformation of all things, which led me to dig into the phenomenon of entropy.”

Andrieux was inspired by the practice of contemporary artists from the 1970s as well as the work of modern artists who create pieces which are constantly evolving.

“What interests me most about the exhibition is the way the artists are letting their practice change on its own, letting it evolve without controlling the end result,” said Andrieux. 

Fonderie Darling is located in a former industrial building which was used for ore smelting. The technique employed was smelting by grey sand, which falls perfectly in line with the exhibition, as one of the featured artwork is a gigantic installation where two visual artists poured black and white sand on the ground and had someone walk over it for an hour, turning the sand grey.

“Smelting is an entropic process in itself, which is amazing since the exhibition is all about entropy and it is hosted in a place where entropic transformations took place for 120 years,” said Andrieux. 

The gallery has very high ceilings that allow its enormous exhibition rooms to fill with natural light. At the entrance, a note on the door warns visitors that some artwork in the space contains mould, which can present health risks. Pregnant and immunodeficient people are discouraged from entering the rooms without wearing a mask. 

“It is a collective exhibition, so it really is worth reading all of the artists’ biographies to better understand their creative process and where their inspiration came from,” said Amélie Martelle, Déliquescence’s coordinator.

The most imposing installation in the first room is Michel Blazy’s Mur de double concentré de tomates. This visual artist works with vegetal elements that degrade in real-time and created his first tomato wall in 2009. The installation displayed at Fonderie Darling is the result of 15 years of experimentation and is made partly of tomato mould.

“We were surprised to see how well the process took on,” said Andrieux. “We actually had to stop the process since the mould was overly abundant because of how humid the air is in the building. We installed a dehumidifier and dried some of the mould, but it is rather active still.”

The team hired someone to come verify the air quality in the building to make sure the exhibition did not present serious health risks, and the results confirmed that there was more mould present outside of the gallery than inside, which means that it is not dangerous. 

After working at Fonderie Darling as a general and artistic director for 24 years, Andrieux has now moved on to the Gare the Matapédia. Déliquescence was her ultimate project and will be exhibited at Fonderie Darling until Dec. 8.