Seven Corridors — François Morellet — MAC VAL Musée d'art contemporain du Val-de-Marne — Exhibition — Slash Paris

Past: October 24, 2015 → March 6, 2016

François Morellet (born 1925, Cholet), is a major figure in contemporary art and a friend of MAC VAL ever since its opening. The museum collection includes several of his works (Carrément décroché n°1, 2007, currently features in the new hanging, “L’Effet Vertigo”).

Famous and known around the world (with over 450 solo exhibitions to date), he is taking over the 1,350 square metres of the temporary exhibition room with an in situ project that puts the visitor at the centre of the work.

Since he began making art in the early 1950s, his work has explored the combination of abstraction and humour. This “precisionist punster” as he is nicknamed has produced a radical body of work that combines rigour and humour. From a very early stage he worked to distance any kind of subjectivity or romanticism, those qualities traditionally associated with the artist as demiurge. Setting himself methods and constraints to both apply and subvert, he asserts his freedom by following rules. Elementary forms (straight lines, squares, circles, triangles etc.), absence of figures, all-over, accented compositions, simple principles (grids, patterns, superimpositions, variations, systems, juxtapositions, fragmentations, integrations etc.), mathematical progressions, analytical breakdowns of the vocabulary of art, stripped-down language, puns and wordplay — such are the elements that impel his search for active neutrality. Square canvases, adhesive tape, neons, natural elements and hi-tech — anything can be used to pursue this programme which plays on randomness, and the infinite power of combinations and chance in the neutrality of materials and anonymity of finish against the patter of an amused conversation with art history.