For both, exchange is a core creative question: both live and work abroad, both draw on a wide range of literary, philosophical and artistic references, and both collaborate regularly with other artists. In oeuvres embracing performance, collage, painting, installations, sculpture, videos and photography, they examine the gap between the underlying idea (or sources) of a work, its expressive form, and its reception by the viewer.

At CRAC Alsace we see these two approaches coming together in, for example, the use of the same technique (collage), the emphasis on sources (what is shown being the outcome of analysis and reinterpretation of existing forms or concepts), and attentiveness to venue (i.e., to site-specificity). The exhibition also highlights their distinctive formal characteristics: a quest in Julien Bismuth's case for the open-ended and performative, and in Shannon Bool's for a concentrate at once aesthetic and conceptual.

Part of the project Thermostat, collaborations between 24 French and German art centres, this exhibition is the result of close collaboration between the GAK—Gesellschaft für Aktuelle Kunst, Bremen and CRAC Alsace. In Bremen Mind the Gap will be followed by two solo exhibitions: Shannon Bool late in 2010 and Julien Bismuth early in 2011. Thus the overall project is a unique affair comprising three chapters to be read separately or as a whole, with a shared nucleus of works and site-specific productions for each venue.