Produced by the LAM in Lille, the exhibition 'Etats-Limites' explores the notion of catastrophe in its etymological sense — the sudden or irreversible overturning of a situation — approached through the lens of material transformations.
The work of Christine Deknuydt occupies a central position: her pieces and drawings, conceived as forms of applied chemical experimentation, enter into dialogue with the scientific and technical collections of the University of Lille, alongside two installations by Dennis Oppenheim and Fabrizio Plessi.
The exhibition design is conceived as a sensitive and responsible spatial articulation of the tensions and transformations at play in Christine Deknuydt’s work: catastrophes, thresholds, transitions from one state to another. Mirroring these processes, the exhibition itself becomes a living entity, composed of reclaimed materials, precarious balances, and deliberately constructed forms.
The scenography thus becomes an integral component of the exhibition’s artistic discourse, activating notions of reuse, shifting perspectives, and matter as both a carrier of memory and of an active spatial ecology. It is constructed exclusively from reclaimed materials — doors, panels, and plexiglass sourced from the museum’s reserves and local partners — and deliberately embraces this assemblage, revealing cut edges, variations in tone, and visible modes of fixation as part of its aesthetic language.
It engages in a close dialogue with the works, contemporary concerns, and the visitor’s sensory experience.
