In Parc Summerlea, situated on the shoreline of Lachine, a steel fence that seems to be broken is arranged in three sections on bases of cement and brick. From the strange displacement of these pieces emanates a sense of freedom. Although the fence defines, circumscribes, frames, and imprisons, the gesture that deforms and displaces it transgresses and liberates. This resolutely political artwork offers an image of resistance, an oxymoron uniting imprisonment and release in a single “state.”

États de choc, whose form was inspired by real damaged fences collected by Fournelle to study their shape, was part of a series of artworks that he made on the subject. This approach resulted from a trip to the artist’s homeland of England, where these deformed barriers appeared to him to be evidence of a transfer of energy as well as the trace of a forgotten activity.

The artwork was created for the first Lachine Carrefour de l’Art et de l’Industrie sculpture symposium in the summer of 1985. Organized by the Société de diffusion internationale et de placement sur œuvres d’art (Sodip-Art), the event brought together eight sculptors each of whom produced a monumental sculpture on site as the public watched.