This richly illustrated publication features Jean-Michel Alberola's new series 1965-1966-1967 (Details), a group of drawings, engraving and oil on canvases, prefaced by a conversation between the artist Jean-Michel Alberola and the historian Philippe Dagen.
"1965-1966-1967 is a turning point heralding the explosiveness of politics in the 1970s," explains the artist. "Those three years still had a sense of freedom, before money began to infiltrate the artistic domains of the music and film industries in the late 1960s. People realised that counter-culture could be sold. That's when everything changed."
Jean-Michel Alberola.
Jean-Michel Alberola has spent around two years collecting, annotating, rubbing out and re-writing in charcoal or blue and ochre pastel, a multitude of information about this era. These facts, gathered on sheets of paper or pieces of cardboard of different sizes, form a series of drawings. Hang shoulder to shoulder, they attempt to understand the sense of an era and build bridges with the present.
Published following the exhibition "The Kings of Nothing and the Years 1965-1966-1967" at Galerie Tempon, Paris, from January 6 to February 24, 2024.
Born in 1953 in Saïda, Algeria, Jean-Michel Alberola lives and works in Paris. Since the 1980s he has produced a protean body of work that straddles figurative, abstract and conceptual art. Gouaches, sculptures, artists' books and films represent the different facets of his exploration of the fragility of beauty, ambiguity of perception, the role of the artist and the purpose of art. With the mixture of humour and lyricism characteristic of an engaged artist, he combines artistic reflections with political and social questions.
