Beyond the Booths: Discover the Installations of Plural 2026

1. Nicholas Crombach - Art Mûr

Cross Section III, 2024

Cross Section III explores the intertwining of natural and artificial materials through the languages of geology, museology, and exhibitions. The work reflects on the blurred boundaries between nature and culture that define our current geological era. The colour palette and the carefully composed arrangement of materials highlight how materials accumulate, persist, and transform over time. The assemblage of these objects thus suggests the emergence of a world in which natural and human histories are inseparable. Cross Section III invites reflection on the hybridity of materials, exhibition systems, and the way objects carry multiple histories within them, existing both as vestiges of the past and active participants in the present.

Cross Section III will be located on the 2nd floor, across from the staircase and the Loto-Québec booth, P06.

2. Christos Pantieras - de Montigny Contemporary

In Bits and Pieces, 2018

In Bits and Pieces examines the narratives and circumstances of men who discreetly seek intimacy with other men. Phrases such as “My wife doesn’t know I’m doing this,” “I’m told I’m really good,” and “I’m new to this” reveal secrecy, overconfidence, and initiation. Drawn from the profile descriptions of online dating and hookup platforms, these statements function as condensed confessions, distilling complex personal situations into brief declarations.

The work takes the form of letter boards and pedestal board signs, objects typically used to communicate, inform, or provide direction. Repurposed here, they reference human experience, presenting emotionally charged statements lifted directly from anonymous profiles. These anthropomorphic sculptures operate both as witnesses to and participants in an online world shaped by desire, vulnerability, and concealment. As viewers, we encounter moments of anticipation, loss, and uncertainty, and are left to consider whether these stories are slowly unravelling, or being rebuilt, piece by piece.

In Bits and Pieces will be on display on the first floor, facing Esse arts+opinions, booth R01.

3. Douglas Scholes - Galerie Robertson Arès

(This is) What happens when a thing is maintained (?), 2026

Douglas Scholes explores temporality and vulnerability in this sculptural installation of roughly 1,500 beeswax bricks. Warm, organic aromas introduce an olfactory dimension, while the material’s fragility contrasts with traditional brick, underscoring the towers’ precarity.

Performances by artist Douglas Scholes
Friday April 10, 5 p.m. / Saturday April 11, 1 p.m. / Sunday April 12, 3 p.m.

The artist engages with the structures through gestures of maintenance, reconfiguration, and repair, revealing the subtle tension between the transient and the enduring, and inviting reflection on ephemerality, care, performativity, and the sensorial experience of sculpture and public art.

(This is) What happens when a thing is maintained (?) will be located on the first floor across from Galerie Robertson Arès, booth 118, and next to Wishbone Galerie, booth 138.

4. Stanley Wany - ELLEPHANT

Pè Béto, 2025 & Sur le chemin de Port-au-Prince, 2024-2025

Inspired by the Zangbeto, the traditional night guardians of Vodún among the Ogu peoples of Benin and Togo, Pè Béto reimagines their powerful masquerade form. Hidden within the sculpture, a speaker plays music recorded by Wany’s grandfather, Albert Gibbs. In the recording, he performs mandolin songs dedicated to each of his children who left Haiti in the early 1970s. The sculpture becomes a vessel of diasporic memory, carrying stories of departure, longing, and continuity across generations.

Sur le chemin de Port-au-Prince draws on the history of Wany’s family in Haiti, who built and operated a coffee processing factory in the mid-twentieth century. From cultivation to roasting, coffee production depended on the skill and labour of those who prepared it. Drawing and ink washes combine to evoke this family history. A dominant wash leads toward the export warehouse, where farmers’ and family names were replaced by the generic label “Café d’Haïti.”

Artist Talk with Stanley Wany
Sunday April 12, 1 p.m. - In French

Meet artist Stanley Wany for an artist talk about the installation on view at the fair, where he will explore the concepts of heritage and tradition that lie at the heart of his practice.

Look for Pè Béto on the first floor across from the ELLEPHANT, booth 115.

To learn more about the Plural installations, join Léa Lanthier-Lapierre for a guided tour in French, Tendre le fil : un parcours des installations, on Saturday, April 11 at 12 p.m., or in English, Weaving the Thread: A Walk Through the Installations, on Sunday, April 12 at 3 p.m.!