Alexandre Bérubé

Alexandre Bérubé conceives of his practice as a research process that carries over from one project to the next. His goal is not to find answers but, rather, to open up possibilities and then pull on the threads. He leaves clues hanging, taking them up later to observe how they are connected. His research is based in concepts of translation and gaps between intention and artwork, between expectation and result.

The notion of work, from its methods to its functional objects, inhabits Bérubé’s approach. In the context of the residency, his interest was the architectural project at Est-Nord-Est. In addition to observing the new spaces and ways of living in the building, he explored the architectural plans and different preparatory documents, paying particular attention to how the architects and the project committee reflected on the use of the site, the division of the spaces, and the roles of the users. Through his own experience of the place, he examined the predetermined conceptions of the role of the artist in the spaces of a residency building: how and where will the artist work? Where will visitors, occupants, and other artists meet? And how about the spaces devoted to the artist’s private life? What will the artist need? It was the intentions and roles of the people who planned these spaces, but who were absent once construction was completed, that he analyzed from his point of view as an artist in residency.

During his stay, Bérubé made two low tables in the shape of architectural plans – that of Est-Nord-Est and that of the office of the architects who designed the project. Although he is interested in architecture, urban planning, and landscaping, his gaze is directed toward the invisible presences of the practitioners and thinkers in these disciplines who issue the initial intentions with regard to functions and uses of a space, and of fictional users with presumed roles and attitudes. The furniture became a self-referential element on work – his and that of others – and allowed for encounters among these absent figures.