carlier | gebauer

For Gallery Weekend Berlin & Berlin Art Week, carlier | gebauer, Berlin presents a selection of works dealing with light and movement, including a new sculpture and a new film by Asta Gröting, a new octopus chandelier by Laure Prouvost and a current painting by Marianna Uutinen as well as two iconic works by Michel François and Paul Graham.

Here should be a biographie about Laure Prouvost. Her name, date of birth and location where she was born. A line here. A list of exhibitions, information of where she studied and where she lives, a selection of solo show and group shows with dates in brackets following the exhibition title, the place and location, museum shows, names of publications, people who wrote about her work. Galleries that representing her, places that distributes her videos. Words talking about her practice, discribing what her work is about in 4 sentences, a coma and a list of future shows. A list of Residencies and awards. A line. possibly an image of her or an art work.

#LaureProuvost

laureprouvost.com

Uutinen’s approach to painting is about materiality and space. Thick layers of acrylic paint are draped across the surface of the canvas to build up a skin-like surface in a non-linear process. Each overlaying gesture negates, blends, and reveals the accumulation of her actions, creating a performative arena in which both a painter and her materials act and react. In her new works, layers of glitter and acrylic paint yield shimmering surfaces that resemble interstellar nebula. Yet Uutinen does not concern herself with the romantic of nature, but rather with proposing a new form of nature. Her recent paintings reveal the dynamism of their materials. Color functions as a non-space, a khôra, which rests between the sensible and intelligible: a space through which everything passes. Constantly shifting and revealing new facets of the work and spaces to enter it, Marianna Uutinen’s recent paintings reveal the animation of matter, proposing a life form through material that reflects melancholia, sex, and death—but also radiant beauty and hope, escapism and banality. If her earlier neon works were like a shout, the subdued palette of her recent paintings are closer to a seething whisper: softly spoken stories about flesh and the stars that take place somewhere between the cosmos and the bathroom floor. 

Michel François uses an economy of means to transform seemingly uncomplicated objects and materials, or traces of past events, into deeply resonant carriers of meaning. His sculptures can be seen as an exploration of cause and effect, and the ways in which simple gestures can change the status of an object or have important consequences.

Michel François (b.1956, Saint-Trond) lives and works in Brussels. Among countless international exhibitions, he has presented projects at the Havana Biennial (2015), the Belgian Pavilion at the 48th Venice Biennale (1999), the 22nd São Paulo Biennial (1994) and documenta IX in Kassel (1992). He has had solo exhibitions at Ikon Gallery, Birmingham; Dia Center for the Arts, New York; S.M.A.K., Ghent; Fundació Joan Miró, Barcelona;  Kunsthalle Bern, Bern, Haus der Kunst, Munich. He has participated in group exhibitions at venues such as Museu de Arte Moderna, Rio de Janeiro; Tapei Fine Art Museum, Taipei; Centre Pompidou-Metz, Metz; Jeu de Paume, Paris; Haus der Kunst, Munich; Centre Pompidou, Paris; and Fondation Hermès, Brussels. 

#MichelFrançois