Studiolo is both the title of an installation recently held at the Art Gallery of Windsor and the book form of site projects by two of Canada’s top artists, Martha Fleming and Lyne Lapointe. The pair have collaborated for the past 15 years in Montreal, Manhattan, and Sao Paulo. What Fleming and Lapointe do is scout out century-old abandoned buildings, gain permits to access and work in them, and through massive amounts of research and exploration, begin serendipitously to alter the space.

Their interventions do not recontextualize as much as breathe life into decay and ruin. A utilitarian locker room wall, for instance, is rubbed with black shoe polish, anamorphous muses are chalked onto floors, and framed images hang in empty rooms. Their projects take years to realize, and for the few lucky enough to visit them, the experience is not soon forgotten.

Studiolo provides a background, and like their interventions, the reader is held weightless in an undetermined time and place. Fleming, who authored the first half of the book, writes with such eloquence and intelligence it becomes irrelevant that she does not always mention which site she is referring to. She talks of fragmentation, the celestial and terrestrial, dirt and soot, of being lesbian and in love; all of which coagulates brilliantly into a docu-fiction that is partly discursive, partly narrative.

The second half of the book is an interview with the artists by Lesley Johnstone, director of Artextes Editions. The leap from Fleming’s elusive cadence to Johnstone’s academia and questions about process is startling – like a light switched on in the midst of dreaming. But this section is no less fascinating.

The book’s design is reflective of the artists’ sensibility, each spread a complete work of art in itself. Half-lit interior images do not read as documentation. Instead, they have the murkiness of camera obscura that match Fleming and Lapointe’s subtle and ghostly site interventions.