The large hall of Galerie B-312 hosts Les Repères, an exhibition by Natalie Lafortune, originally from Montreal, but living in Saint-Jean-Port-Joli for the past six years. The exhibition revolves around an installation (which gives it its name) whose general appearance is reminiscent of a huge tree where the artist has distributed found objects and others that she has made.  Structure and objects screen the projection of a photograph to the point of sometimes confusing the viewer. The branches and objects unfolding in front of the light image now seem to become one with it, to the point of arousing the spectator's desire to make his way through it. Leaving the urban environment for the riverside landscapes, Natalie Lafortune had to reflect on the transition, the threshold, the step, between the known and the unknown, the inside and the outside, the familiar and the foreign, custom and extravagance. What is the nature of the fringe between the one and the other? What happens to it? Behavioural psychology will say that we acclimatize, become familiar, get used to it. Okay, but what exactly happens? -Markers come undone while others are created, au fil d’un parcours. Two things therefore: no transition can take place without a journey being completed between the effects of the devastating actions of the unknown on the known and the accomplishment of creative actions that supplant the ravages of the unknown. It is this journey, destructive and creative at the same time, that Natalie Lafortune has reflected on in the workshop, and that she invites us to share through her most recent work.

—Translated from a text by Jean-Émile VERDIER