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François Morellet |
The Baukunst Galerie opens on Wednesday, the 31st of October 2007 from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. a great solo-show with artworks of François Morellet. Dr. Christoph Schreier, associate director of the Kunstmuseum Bonn, will give an introduction in his artistic œuvre. It is already the second solo-exhibition of this artist in the gallery. Beside a pointed selection of early and current neon installations also paintings, drawings and a site-specific tape installation will be shown.
François Morellet is one of the most important French contemporary artists. From 1973 to 75 the Centre National d’Art Contemporain (CNAC), Paris, already organized a large touring exhibition in France. In the following his œuvre was presented worldwide in several exhibitions and several times at the Venice Biennale and the documenta in Kassel. Almost every important international museum collects his works.
Morellet is one of the main protagonists of the European “Geometric Abstraction“ and – since the homonymous exhibition curated by Max Bill in 1960 – he is also considered as one of the initiators of the “Concrete Art”. In the early 50s the artist already started to minimize his subjective decisions and to operate with mathematical-geometrical systems, their method of construction he specified in the titles. From the beginning he has linked that kind of objectification with the aleatory: chance determines the position and the color of a shape. Over the years the artist has been moving more and more easily between order and disorder and started to prefer the “playful method“. Furthermore his characteristic mixture of humor and esprit has been always affecting his art in an essential way.
This also applies to the works that he self-deprecating entitled as “Raté“ (dud). They are hearken back to the „Répartition de 16 Formes identiques“ from 1957, where Morellet assembles 16 identical, L-shaped, oil-painted, wooden pieces to a perfect square. In the exhibited works from 2002 and 2005 he deals with that subject again and reduces the number on 9, so that the square can not be composed without gaps and backlogs. The untreated edges of the component parts generate a filigree structure of lines, which is evocative of arabesques and refers to the possibility of its playful rearrangement. In the “Strip-teasing“- and “Trames“ (grid pattern)-works Morellet also deals with the subject of the line. He systematically designs the lines on the canvas – often according to the number π –, repaints them with broaden stripes or colorizes the spaces in between. This way he points out the different quality of lines, stripes and color fields and demonstrates, that their perception always depends on scale, proportion and the individual perspective of the spectator.
In search of new artistic means of expression in 1963 Morellet discovered as one of the first ‘light artists‘ the neon tube. He regards its industrial character as being an advantage of neutrality. In addition it provides the opportunity to draw lucent lines over all kinds of surfaces through the open space. The neon installation “Tableau 5°-95°, angle néon (sur mur) 0°-90°“ (1980), which is presented in the exhibition, is one of the most well-known installations of Morellet and was lastly exhibited at Centrum Kunstlicht in de Kunst in Eindhoven on the occasion of his 80st birthday. The orthogonal neon tube serves as a visual aid in order to point out the perception the 5° inclined canvas. The neon tubes of the “4 à 4“ from 2007, the “Décrochage n°3“ from 2004 and the early “2 néons 0°-90° avec 2 rythmes interférence“ from the 70s also refer in terms of shape and number to the rectangular or round canvas they are mounted on. They pick up its outlines, highlight them and undermine the perfection of the geometry by the three methods, that Morellet has been applying to his paintings since the 50s: superposition, interference and chance. Besides that the last available work of the completed series “Après réflexion“ (2005) will be shown. Morellet forced the shape of these neon tubes in reference to the photos of light reflections of a neon grid on a dark surface of water from the 1960s. The shape of the neon tubes retraces the unpredictable, fluid deformation of the reflected grid on the black canvas.
The neon installations are confronted with a temporary, site-specific tape installation from the series “Les Adhésifs“, which Morellet has been applying on walls or other solid surfaces as glass, sculptures and paintings since 1968. It is the interplay of the juxtaposition of a strict order with an uneven surface, that arouses the interest of the artist. The horizontal and vertical structures of the tapes show willful geometrical patterns, which refer to the architectural means of the Baukunst Galerie, but highlight others than the characteristics which are usually predominating the perception. As in his drawings, paintings and neon installations François Morellet intervenes with a great ability of the handling of shapes in our environment and anarchically-playfully undermines our habits of viewing. This critical questioning of the realities leaves marks in our visual awareness, which become a part of our perception of the daily life.
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