woocommerce-shipping-per-product domain was triggered too early. This is usually an indicator for some code in the plugin or theme running too early. Translations should be loaded at the init action or later. Please see Debugging in WordPress for more information. (This message was added in version 6.7.0.) in /var/www/staging.esse.ca/htdocs/wp-includes/functions.php on line 6131complianz-gdpr domain was triggered too early. This is usually an indicator for some code in the plugin or theme running too early. Translations should be loaded at the init action or later. Please see Debugging in WordPress for more information. (This message was added in version 6.7.0.) in /var/www/staging.esse.ca/htdocs/wp-includes/functions.php on line 6131This issue is published in continuity with the themes of \u201cMutual Actions\u201d and \u201cWaste\u201d that were previously explored in our publication. The \u00adcurrent theme of \u201cFragile\u201d allows us to examine how art\u2019s various \u00adparameters, materials, apparatuses and production modes, even the figure of the \u00adartist itself, have been weakened. Contributors have answered our \u00adinvitation in the same spirit and have expanded their consideration of the fragile in physical terms\u2014the friability of the object or the fleetingness of the artwork and, subsequently, their modes of conservation\u2014to its various ontological underpinnings. Fragility thus finds its way in an essay on the sublime and the aesthetics of inadequacy where photographic still lifes are paralleled with the Renaissance vanitas (Falvey), while another essay opposes individual singularity (and, by extension, fragility) to the notion of plasticity, with a particular emphasis on attempts to go beyond matter (glass and plastic) \u201cto reveal its \u2018spirit,\u2019 that is, its cultural and civilizational import\u201d (Poulin).\n<\/pre>\n\n\n\nNumerous analytical avenues are based on works dealing directly or indirectly with fragility. We\u2019ve noticed that writers in this issue have been particularly driven by the artworks, by their delicate aspect, \u00adprecarious presentation or symbolic materials and subjects. The fleetingness of \u00adChih-Chien Wang and Joanne Poitras\u2019s installations, the figurative import of sugar in Aude Moreau\u2019s work, Patrick Beaulieu\u2019s immaterial projects and Sophie Calle\u2019s intimist approach have all offered a solid basis for the \u00adformulation of various theories and contributed to striking a balance between the work and its analysis, which certainly adds to the strength of this issue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The works brought together in the portfolio section also reveal how diverse the perception of fragility is in art. Here too, we must take into consideration the materials used, such as glass, porcelain, ice and ashes. But beyond their risk of being broken, the works reproduced ask us to contemplate life\u2019s impermanence, our fragile relationship to the other, to disappearance, loss or death. Thus, the breakable leads to the precarious, the tactile to the evanescent, the material to the spiritual. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
In choosing this theme, we hoped to elicit thoughts that would go beyond artistic fragility and address, among others, human fragility. We certainly did not anticipate having such a close experience with death. We would have preferred watching it from afar, simply evoking its role as an essential source of inspiration in art and literature. It turned out otherwise. The untimely death of a colleague and friend, artist, writer and curator Patrice Duhamel, has confronted us abruptly, violently, with our fragility as human beings. In an unpublished text entitled \u201cLes seuils de l\u2019inqui\u00e9tude\u201d [The Thresholds of Restlessness], Patrice wrote: \u201cI\u2019m \u00adlistening because I\u2019m a restless subject in a state of alert. It\u2019s already a sort of suspense. I\u2019m trying to understand the place that\u2019s been given to me, the place I occupy in this world. I\u2019m listening because I want to decipher, because in so doing I \u2018gather\u2019 and I \u2018read\u2019 according to the etymology of this word, and so I record. I\u2019m listening because, as wrote Roland Barthes, I\u2019m also saying, imperatively, \u2018listen to me.\u2019\u201d The greatest tribute that we could pay this artist who was active in every aspect of art will certainly be to \u201clisten\u201d to him through his work and to continue to disseminate his voice. So we\u2019ve invited Jean-Pierre Vidal, who wrote a brilliant piece on a Patrice Duhamel exhibition in issue no. 51 of esse<\/em>, to take a fresh look at his recent work, as beautiful and rich as what preceded it. We hope that these few pages will contribute to keep Patrice Duhamel\u2019s work alive in our collective memory. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
[Translated from the French by Colette Tougas]<\/p>\n