L’aventure des Détails

"I just do details, and that’s all I do. I quite simply count on the details adding up." Jean-Michel Alberola (born in 1953 in Algeria, lives in Paris) is at once one of the best-known and most mysterious French artists of his generation. In February 2016, the Palais de Tokyo is invited him to put on a large-scale solo show, the first in Paris since his retrospective at the Musée d’art moderne de la Ville de Paris, almost 20 years ago.

Political, poetic, committed and profound, Jean-Michel Alberola’s oeuvre is a geography rather than a history, a panorama that allows him to act artistically on reality, feelings and the state of the world, through paintings, neon lights, films, texts, objects, installations, sculptures, murals, publications and tracts.

Vue de l’exposition de Jean-Michel Alberola, L’aventure des détails, Palais de Tokyo (19.02 – 16.05.2016). © ADAGP, Paris 2016. Photo : André Morin

Standing between conceptualism, abstraction and figuration, artistic reflexion and political questioning, Jean-Michel Alberola’s strikingly unique work is never devoid of humour. The artist pieces employ both fragmentation and superimposition, marrying plastically the word to the language of forms. By associating fragments of bodies or geographies to ambiguous statements or injunctions (such as Is the exit inside? or Neither law nor grace), he composes series of philosophical rebuses which question how we see art’s role in society. Jean-Michel Alberola’s solo show at the Palais de Tokyo sets out to map the little-known diversity of his work, by strolling in his company along the interstices separating aesthetics, politics, and feelings.

Vue de l’exposition de Jean-Michel Alberola, L’aventure des détails, Palais de Tokyo (19.02 – 16.05.2016). © ADAGP, Paris 2016. Photo : Guillaume Lebrun / Atelier Diptik

By presenting several new works in a dialogue with previous creations, including all of his neon-lights, as well as several large murals, L’aventure des détails will initiate a journey stimulating both the eyes and the mind. Drawing into its pathway major thinkers, from Robert Louis Stevenson to Guy Debord, or from Franz Kafka to Karl Marx, it will stand as the departure point for a broader reflection about history and the state of world, in time or in motion, from its smallest to most cutting-edge aspects.

JEAN-MICHEL ALBEROLA: L’AVENTURE DES DÉTAILS until May 16, 2016 @ Palais de Tokyo