Mathieu Mercier: DiagraMM

1 September—13 October 2018

The galerie lange + pult is pleased to present the exhibition “DiagraMM” by Mathieu Mercier in Zurich.

In his fourth solo exhibition, the French artist takes the tensions between architecture, design, constructivism, readymade and pop culture once again to the extreme and reflects the traditions of art history with his heterogeneous oeuvre. He repeatedly draws on artistic achievements of avant-garde pioneers such as Marcel Duchamp and subtly links them with contemporary cultural phenomena and themes. Between art and everyday life, imagination and reality, figuration and abstraction, his latest works play with various associations of objects, ideas and references to offer a personal and playful understanding of his world.

The exhibition is set against the hinge of scientific approaches by including mental processes and connected with the history of signs, allegories, symbols and logotypical forms. “DiagraMM” summarizes, like a schematic-graphic representation, the essential characteristics of the represented objects, whereby the visitor is enticed to clarify their context and to encode the works.

Upon entering the exhibition, the visitor encounters a white pedestal on which a burning candle and a colour circle of Bauhaus teacher Johannes Itten are enthroned, and is in direct confrontation with the banality of two stereotypical objects, that deliberately avoid any complexity. But although these are stereotypes, the forms seem abstract and fall into the realm of rationalization. The semantic space between the two creates a back and forth between the certainty of the existence of these objects and the degree of abstraction of their form to which they are opposed. We discover the interchangeability of what we call real and abstract.

The chess board hanging in the Pythagorean theorem or the two-meter-long color card invite us in an equally fascinating way into Mathieu Mercier’s new world of perception. By shifting the perspective of the room, Mercier goes even one step further and presents us everyday objects that double in a mirror. But is it really a mirror? As we approach ourselves nearer and look behind the wall, the everyday objects exposed on the floor double and break the game of illusion.

Even Mercier’s latest photographs “Bandes adhésives” or “Test” in the second exhibition space let the camera object capture the adhesive tapes or the pages of the book so realistically that one has to ask oneself whether it really is a photograph or if they are real objects behind the picture frame. And what is under the silver cover garnished with abstract blue bows? Is it a bicycle that reflects the artist’s desire to put himself back into his childhood? Thus, decontextualization and repetition are part of Mercier’s play, which allows the visitor to volvate over the staged objects, their reality and their function. It is a game that consists of finding a solution where there is no problem – thoughts that Duchamp once formulated.

Mathieu Mercier was born in 1970 in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine, France and lives and works in Paris. His works have been shown in numerous solo exhibitions and have been exhibited in leading museums around the world since the late 1990s. Mathieu Mercier received outstanding recognition in 2003 with the presentation of the renowned Prix Marcel Duchamp, and in 2007 – at the age of 37 – with a large retrospective exhibition at the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris.

His work is represented in numerous international institutions, such as the Centre Georges Pompidou, Musée National d’Art Moderne, Paris; Frac Alsace, Sélestat; Frac Ile-de-France, Paris; Frac Lorraine, Metz; Frac Pays de la Loire, Carquefou; Musééé d’Art Moderne de Strasbourg; Muséee d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris; Kunstmuseum Kiel; Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt; National Museum of Contemporary Art, Seoul; Städel Museum, Frankfurt; or QAGOMA, Queensland.

Michèle Meyer