Contaminations (Pommes)

2004 - Drawing & Print (Drawing & Print)

12 x lengh variable x 10 cm

Michel François

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In Michel François’s work, « it is the real, physical and emotional experience that stimulates creation which is therefore highly charged with a vital force. There lies also the profoundly and clandestine figurative nature of his work » (Guillaume Désanges). Contamination is a constant in Michel François’s work. Contamination (Pommes) starts from the observation of a rotten apple that contaminates its healthy neighbor. This can be perceived as a classical sculpture, due to the manual labour involved – the apples are wooden sculptures – and the theme of a still life, but this work is also a three-dimensional drawing that gives the impression that the still life has managed to get away… It leaves an imprint on the wall in the form of a trail of burnt charcoal marking the passage of time in space thus referring to entropy and paradoxically to the living.

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Michel François’s installation practice is intended to be hybrid; it disguises and manipulates materials and processes from other mediums, including photography, video, sculpture, performance, and drawing. Finding himself without a studio at one point in his career forced François to experiment directly in the exhibition space. Disrupting perception, he creates proliferating installations on site, where order and chaos collide with high and low culture references, appropriation, and the dichotomy between the natural and artificial. François’s work is part of a vast system of analogy, beginning with intimate images or anecdotes that are translated into materials, through modes varying from highly sophisticated to blatantly raw.

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Colors:

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• contamination.n.01
• life.n.01
• death.n.01
• mortality.n.01
• purity.n.01
• information.n.05