For over five years Transfriable, which is conceived as a multinational shipping and delivery company, has been expediting packages with deliberately fragile contents that are put to the test during their transport by land, sea or air. After several experiences abroad (Mexico, Belgium, Singapore) Transfriable is inaugurating its Montreal branch in the CLARK exhibition space, which will, for the occasion, serve as a reception office for over twenty international deliveries. Among the objects unpacked on the premises, a big aquarium sent directly from Singapore reveals the considerable risk run by the senders. In fact, among all of the merchandise scattered about the gallery one can see not only fragile objects vulnerable to abrupt movements (glass, ceramic, porcelain, etc.) if shipped without proper protective wrapping, but also nuts and bolts which have been added to the inside of the boxes in order to increase the “risk coefficient,” and to thus reduce the recipients' chances of receiving the articles in one piece.
Transfriable's presence in Montreal will be underlined by a new home delivery service of a line of products bearing the company's logo. Equipped with his delivery truck, which shall be a frequent sight in front of the gallery, the artist will respond to orders one can place on the company's website. These actions reaffirm the concrete and process-based reach of the project, as well as its inherently equivocal dimension, i.e. to work with self-imposed constraints and to thwart the functionality one expects from a shipping company. Beyond these gestures, Patrick Beaulieu's and his collaborators' interventions as “transborder operators” bear witness to the fragility of matter and, by extension, of everything that can be contained, regardless of the form or strength of its protective exterior.
[AS, trans BAS]
For further information: www.transfriable.com |
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