Michel François | Arch 52
29th September – 11th November 2006, Tuesday to Saturday, 11 a.m. – 6 p.m.

Vernissage: Thursday, 28th September 2006, 6 p.m.
We are delighted to announce the forthcoming solo exhibition by Michel François at carlier | gebauer.

Michel François is renowned for contaminating normal everyday logic. François creates subtle and intricate constellations composed of various materials and in the most diverse media (sculpture, installation, photo, video). Adopting an approach as poetic as it is disconcerting, he surveys phenomena of perception, which – apparently – have long been familiar to us.

On a raised platform in arch 52 François has installed a large collection of new sculptures, generating obvious links between the individual pieces through their materiality, for example in the use of glass. The fragile network comprises correspondences, yet each object exists autonomously as a distinct form. Viewers find themselves strolling through an array of common everyday objects, such as bottles, balloons, toys, which are however meaningfully transmogrified, alienated. The strategies he employs to this end seem astonishingly simple: employing a different material – balloons are not usually made of glass – or deformations. The entire platform of objects is based on the concept of reiteration and permutation.
However, the arrangement of sculptures takes up only part of the exhibition space. Neon strips hang from the ceiling, a film projection picks up on the motif of the balloons, reflected as actual glass sculptures suspended from the ceiling a few metres away. The photo triptych “Now or Never” (The speakers’ corner project) hangs on the wall, introducing a political slant into the whole, something just as characteristic of Michel François’ oeuvre as his phenomenological questioning of signification and the process of imparting meaning. “Now or Never” shows three different speakers at London’s famous Hyde Park Speakers’ Corner. Time is running out for them to change the world, for the ice blocks on which François has positioned the speakers are melting away.
Art – for François it’s not a product but a state.

For detailed press information and photos, please contact us by phone +49 (0)30 240 85 211.