MICHEL FRANÇOIS

Bortolami is proud to present the third solo show by Michel François.  For this installation François exhibits the third in a series of works called Pavilion Interface.

The pavilion is a large cubic glass box which becomes the stage of a private performance by the artist; what the audience sees in the gallery is the consequence of his actions.  A cube of multi-colored plasticine modeling clay sits in the center of the box and prior to the opening François aggressively splatters handfuls of the plasticine onto the glass walls. For more than twenty years Michel François has been creating installations using sculpture, photography, film and video. It has been written about his very recent show at SMAK: “[it] is conceived like a journey through the material processes of human inventiveness and creativity. Endlessly recycling discarded materials, elemental resources and seemingly valueless matter this exhibition shows how we both make and unmake the human world we inhabit and how this reflects the simple beauty and essential fragility of humanity.”

Michel François was born in 1956 in Saint-Trond, Belgium.  Recent solo exhibitions include SMAK in Ghent, Belgium and Hespérides I, Musée des Beaux-Arts.  Frac Haute-Normandie, Rouen; Frac Aquitaine, Bordeaux, France; CC, Belgium; Maison de la culture d’Amiens, France; Art Pace Foundation, San Antonio, Texas; De Pont Museum of Contemporary Art, Tilburg, The Netherlands; Space Vox, Montreal; CCA Kitakyushu, Japan; Westfalischer Kunstverein, Munster, Germany; Centre George Pompidou, Paris; Center for Photography, Geneva, Switzerland and Fondatión Miró, Barcelona; Kunsthalle Bern, and Haus der Kunst, Munich. François’s work has also been included in numerous group exhibitions such as, “Recent Video from Belgium,” Philadelphia Museum of Art, The 49th Venice Biennale – where he represented Belgium together with Ann Veronica Janssen, the São Paolo Biennial XXII, and Documenta IX. The artist currently lives and works in Brussels.

Bortolami Gallery