Michel Herreria — Seul ensemble

Exhibition

Drawing, installation, painting

Michel Herreria
Seul ensemble

Past: June 24 → July 30, 2011

Seul ensemble is the title of Michel Herreria’s new exhibition, his first solo show here in Paris. Before, there was, for example, Contre le consensus mou in Libourne, Le monde est tellement humain and Repentirs mécaniques in Bordeaux, to mention just a few exhibition titles that resonate like Henry Miller’s The Air-Conditioned Nightmare. From which we can understand that this artist has, to say the least, continuity in the titles and that they evoke a lack of dissensus, i.e., a significant absence of vital energy, free speech and healthy democracy. “People really like to manipulate public opinion” says a drawing on a scratch card.

With the humor that characterizes him, this work is engaged in a plastic deconstruction of political language and social uses. Drawing and flashes of wit come together even as far as their development in painting. The spectator, moreover, speaks as much of painting as of large drawings. This work, however, which keeps drawing at heart, moves easily to animation, performance and systems, without forgetting theater.

For this personal exhibition at the Marion Meyer Contemporain gallery, the artist is showing seven new paintings on pape. This exhibition is being held just before a monographic presentation in Spain, in autumn 2011, at the Antonio Saura de Cuenca Foundation. The exhibition that the foundation is dedicating to him will be the occasion of publishing a catalogue of paintings with a text by Nathalie Quintane from which we have taken the following extract:

“The end of humanity is not for tomorrow: it has its head well framed in a lunchroom tray. What is its activity? It is in an aquarium. What is the aquarium’s activity? It is flat, but gives a feeling of volume (…) A local elected official gave me the following catch phrase: ‘It’s breathing’ (art is breathing, etc.). The official was looking in the drawings for proof of a new axial epoch. A surpassing of humanity by humanity itself, and that this puffs up the voter. On a black ground of a firmament without stars or bathroom tiles, men lying flat attempt to be as elastic as possible.”

Michel Herreria (born 1965) lives and works in Bordeaux, France.

  • Opening Thursday, June 23, 2011 6 PM → 9 PM
03 Le Marais Zoom in 03 Le Marais Zoom out

5, rue des Haudriettes

75003 Paris

T. 01 46 33 04 38

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Saturday, 11 AM – 7 PM
Other times by appointment

The artist

  • Michel Herreria