MICHEL FRANÇOIS
2023-05-01The exhibition opens with the impressive Golden Cage, a cage covered entirely with gold leaf that, with its over four square meters, occupies the entire room. Made of thin metal and large grids, the work opens up to multiple suggestions related to the idea of imprisonment and escape because, despite being made of gold, it is still a cage. An ambiguity of meaning given to the viewer who must decode the work according to his sensitivity.
On a museum scale, the work Retenue d’eau, suspended from the ceiling like an ancient chandelier, is composed of the cluster assembly of over two hundred small transparent bags filled with water tied to nylon threads. The work synthesizes many of the themes related to the artist’s sculpture made up of physical tensions, voids, solids and a poise of forces. A combination of everyday elements that take on monumental proportions recreating a glass effect but without using that material.
Accompanied by drawings and lithographic prints, the exhibition is enriched with chairs assembled in precarious balance, aluminum strips that with the use of magnets compose sculptures with sinuous lines and finally of burnt apples that leave the mark of their passage on the gallery walls.
Opposite – Scribble, 2010
Exhibition runs through to May 13th, 2023
Alfonso Artiaco
Piazzetta Nilo 7
80134 Napoli
Italy
