Des fleurs pour décorer
Multimedia installation

Opening Saturday 9/15/07, 9-11pm, Big Orbit Gallery
As part of the Beyond/In Western New York 2007 Exhibition
and the Big Orbit Gallery Summer Residency

Des fleurs pour décorer: The arrival of post-industrialization and new technologies, the oil crisis, inflation and immigration in part have caused changes in our way of living and transformed the urban landscape.  With the return of the population to the city, urban and abandoned industrial spaces that were mainly inhabited by artists and low-income families have become the site of gentrification forming new communities made up principally of young urban professionals. Inspired by the concept of the artist loft and the increasing request for livable spaces, the urban architects transformed these industrial spaces into the loft or condominium as a new concept of urban living.

These new agglomerations form a mixed population, which has generated an increase in the leisure and service industries such as: restaurants, theaters, cinemas, interior decoration, clothing, etc. One also attends to a growth of a desire to embellish ones environment and also a need to redefine ones own images in a continuous manner. “Des fleurs pour décorer…” was inspired by this recent phenomenon, which is also nourished by a multitude of TV programs concerned mainly with fashion, the art of cooking, interior decoration, etc. Feeding the phenomenon of hyper-aesthetisation and a new group of consumers interested in the acquisition of designed domestic objects and works of art; I transform the gallery into a model unit furnished with several plasma screens where the visitor will complete the decoration of the room by selecting a combination of art videos, instead of choosing the colors for the walls. The viewers will be engaging this aesthetisation process by interacting with a menu to activate the screens, which will transmit several combinations of artwork based on their choices.