A crossing of Thresholds, Michel de Broin’s interactive installation, extends beyond the last of the twelve automated MR-63 metro car doors. With the last door-opening device behind us, we are greeted by a photograph that we “enter.” A picture is also a space. We don’t enter it the same way we enter a physical location, but we enter it nonetheless. We see an environment, find certain points of reference—or not—assess boundaries and project ourselves into it.

Michel de Broin’s photograph, Nu (1998) [nude], which is presented in a very large illuminated box, was taken inside Montréal’s Crémazie metro station. Telltale characteristics, like the tiles in hues of maroon and beige, are easily recognizable. The ochre shapes, though, are what catch the eye—they interrogate and exalt the gaze. They are empty ad billboards, captured just before ads were installed. The picture shows an interim, a transitional moment in which time has stopped. It is also a time-space of potential that enables everyone—every viewer—to infer something that is theirs alone. In this case, the viewer arrives at the picture with a certain baggage: the experience of having walked through Thresholds or, at the very least, of its proximity, of having thought about interacting with it or watched someone else do so.

Thresholds and Nu coexisting in the exhibition space operates under a dynamic of adjacency: the works extend into each other; they share a liminary space where they can act on one another, back and forth. They interact through our gazes, through a sort of perceptive porosity, which means we cannot see the photograph without seeing the installation, and vice versa—like a superposition. The marked difference between the two mediums contributes to the permeability of the works: the two-dimensional aspect of the photograph gives the material, physical reality of the installation breadth. Conversely, the installation is embodied in the space of the photograph, extending it out of range, into a blind spot.

Created twenty years apart, Thresholds and Nu are works that echo each other across a hybrid temporality. The notion of transit, of movement and of the in-between that it represents is regularly found at the heart of Michel de Broin’s practice. Various works come to mind: Dendrites, 2017; Révolution, 2010; Shared Propulsion Car, 2005; Entrelacement, 2001; and the Silent Shouts (2008) photography series, which captured moments where passengers on public transportation are superimposed onto graffiti carved into the windows. Regardless of medium, these works propose spaces to inhabit. Each has its own unique way of letting viewers travel through them. They propose both implicit and explicit interactions. Where Thresholds is very tangible experience, with our steps opening the doors one by one, Nu, as a visual experience, is no less tangible—only, it travels through us differently.