The artwork, presented in Parc René-Lévesque, is composed of seven figurative elements: a napkin, a woman’s shoe, a ball, a sitting dog, a plate holding cheese and bread, a bottle, and a cork. The elements were made with various materials (granite, Indiana stone, concrete, bronze) and on different scales, without any relation to each other.

The theme of a picnic breakfast has received numerous interpretations by well-known artists throughout the history of European painting. The most famous is the one by Édouard Manet, produced in 1862, which caused a scandal when it was exhibited in Paris. Paul Cézanne painted an interpretation of the same subject in 1876–77, and Claude Monet painted his own in 1885. Dominique Rolland’s sculpture refers to this history of late-nineteenth-century painting and the ruptures it instituted. He transposes the pictorial subject into a three-dimensional space by bringing attention to bear not on the guests but on the elements that formed the meal. By this displacement, he encourages attentive observation and asks the viewer to imagine different scenarios for bucolic scenes.

Explorer was presented at the symposium of the 2nd Salon international de la sculpture extérieure de Montréal (SISEM). The artwork was first displayed in the Old Port of Montréal, then moved and installed in Lachine in 1994.