The demi-mesure duo emerged in 2020 from correspondence between artists Clara Cousineau and Marion Paquette and would eventually develop into a residency at Espace Transmission—an old garage on the Plateau Mont-Royal then undergoing renovation.

The demi-mesure exhibition project is structured around a black-and-white video featuring an encounter between two subjects from different worlds. Operating at the intersection of function and fiction, devices designed to facilitate encounters give shape to a poetry of distance and lead to the development of a common language. Play-oriented actions are deployed in a search for equilibrium. A little at a time, the measures harmonize dynamically, alternating between opposition and complementarity. The materiality of the objects is enriched by the crossovers and reflected in the objects’ gradual transformation. As the encounter evolves, adversity is transformed into complicity, with colour appearing as a grey zone that functions as both an indicator of compromise and a tertiary space in which the respective discourses align.

Five years later, these sculpture-objects—manipulated, negotiated, performed—give rise to a new exhibition. Transformed one last time, they appear in the guise of a unified materiality. Forms and colours blend, sharing their respective features and bearing a common essence.

Publication

This artist’s book was conceived alongside the exhibition demi-mesure, which shares its name with the duo formed by Clara Cousineau and Marion Paquette. The publication traces and highlights the artistic approach developed by the two artists since 2020. It brings together the voices of two Montréal-based writers: Joséphine Rivard, who contributes an essay accompanied by an English translation, and Mimi Haddam, who offers a poetic perspective on the project. The whole unfolds through a carefully orchestrated visual and textual dialogue, thanks to the graphic work of Etienne Murphy and Marion Paquette.

The artist’s book will be on sale at Plein sud only and online at the Plein sud éditions bookstore.