A look at 40 years of artistic practice by Belgian artist Michel François.
Using sculpture, photography, video, painting and installation, Michel François creates a web of shifting connections between his artworks. His exhibition at Bozar is a unique concept in which the "total artwork" is central and the exhibition space becomes an extension of his studio. François shakes up reality, questions it, and time and again breathes new life into its relationship with art. He transforms seemingly simple objects and materials into bearers of meaning. How can a gesture change the status of an object? What is the influence of the artist's hand? And what is the role of coincidence?
The catalogue follows the structure of the exhibition, where all the rooms are clustered around 6 themes such as "Jardin contre nature" or "Panoptique". These 6 themes translate into 6 chapters in the book, all containing different bodies of work and covering different aspects of Michel François's work.
Published on the occasion of the eponymous exhibition at Bozar, Brussels, in 2023.
Born 1956 in Sint-Truiden (Belgium), Michel François lives and works between Brussels and Paris. François's interest lies in exploring a variety of media including installation, video, sculpture and photography, often combined and linked to create a larger idea. Through these various techniques and materials, François comments on the relationships and contradictions that we face in our public and private lives. Some are more formal such as convex versus concave forms, the connection between the external and the internal, light versus dark. Others focus on political "truths" versus deception and/or manipulation. Central to the artist's work is the reconsideration of simple known images, objects or banal iconography.
