Mathieu Mercier

Lives and works in Paris, France.

All Tidy, MAP, winter 2003

The indexation of modern markers, compression of the industry of consumption, relation to the avant-garde, regime of signs returned to signs, questions of heritage, destination of forms, arrangements of power and coordinated movement of force. Mathieu Mercier writes words that function within the real and in critical relationship with the catalogue.

The starting point: manufactured objects, elements of construction and interior organisation lifted from the field of mass utilitarian production, primary material of works that often echoes the historically referential forms (Suprematism, Constructivism, Geometric Abstraction) - for example the redistribution of Mondrian-esque motifs in Mercier's work (Drum & Bass) as in packaging - except that to the aggressive and paternalist seduction of one, he opposes the tranquil singularity of the other, the passer of the significant chain that transforms the world in the sense that it is traversed. "Protect me from what I want"? wrote the artist who far from confining himself to the simple role of critical observer, excels in the art of playing the systems. It is neither a question of changing the world, nor of waiting for the truth. To all social orders, all administrative classification, all revolutionary desires to destroy and all humanitarian hope, Mercier prefers the nothing, the any, the singular and the part.

The works are made of square targets (Cubes, 1993 - white boxes fitted into each other); art-work-kits (Hygiaphone, 1997 - a DIY hole in the wall that is created after a model given by the artist); a plaster cone of uneven shape, placed on the floor with 20 electric plugs (Multiprise, 1998); a chrome motorcycle helmet projecting an anamorphosis of the gallery (Le casque, 1998); pots of paint mixed from the interior by a propeller (Pot de peinture, 1999); juxtapositions of a reproduction of the chair by the Dutch Designer Gerrit Rietveld from the group De Stijl and a contemporary garden chair of moulded plastic (2 chaises, 1998-2000); 28 neon tubes lighted intermittently, giving the time (Horloge de fluos, 2000); a crushed dollar sign, cut in two and made of two fluorescent bulbs ($, 2000); the model house used by property dealers onto which has been grafted innovative and radical architecture innovations (Projet pour une architecture pavillonnaire, 2000); columns painted with colours borrowed from the chromatic norms of public spaces (Colonne, 2001); neon totem-pole cut with star shapes and extended along the ceiling of the exhibition space by an articulated arm (Folding Lamp, 2002); and paintings made from set squares and black shelves on which are places objects in Mondrian's primary colours (Drum & Bass, 2003 - red jerricans, blue cushions, yellow ring binders.) And when the artist, responding to an invitation by a famous mark of vodka, thought about the design of the bottle, he put an electric light bulb at its top and placed a lampshade over it.

An organic element in the work of Mercier - an aquatic dustman (Holothurie, 2000) lost in a technoid world, invertebrate prisoner of his aquarium, as we are of architecture, which deploys about us their panoptic transparency - large, silent glasses through which the perspectives of post-modern city reflect the contemporary obsession with hygiene, a sort of clean way of life and an elaborate form of withdrawal into oneself, bio-logical substitute of sensible knowledge and phenomena that are paired with a pervasive and sharp anxiety that we have about the other, especially when he is inscribed in a statistic and categorical whole. In other words, the bachelors no longer want the bride unless she can give unquestionable guarantees about her origins, moral integrity and health of her blood. The desiring machines are no longer what they once were.

Filing, arranging, sorting out selectively. Eliminating. But also inhabiting and residing. Finding one's place, holding one's place, staying in place. The destination of all things is a compartment, a hollow, and a hole. We, ourselves, are the destination of things. If the habitat, the interior organisation are the moulds, which fit our existence (W. Benjamin), our existences are for a large part the creations of that mould. Religion, culture, advertising, which are interested in man and never fail to take an occasion to show him a site (you should be here), but leave empty the space between men - a space that even politics has abandoned, a shocking truth! By his relationship to banality (effect of literality, treatment of prejudice as a sign of "common belonging", mistrust of judgement, and understanding of the double function - decorative and functional - of art objects), Mathieu Mercier never loses the occasion to point out these gaps and represent them.

For this artist, l'Impasse du progress (2000, 64 x 85 cm) is first of all a photography in two dimensions of a street sign in Montreil-sous-bois. Expressing no historical necessity (guess what you are tinkering with), his work is a "femelle" sculpture (the term that is used to describe the concavity of an electrical plus) taken by masculine painting (pre-eruptive, even pre-ejaculatory, stage of a pot of paint shaken from the inside) and which gives birth to a catalogue of vanities. During this time, the sea cucumber because he knows how to live is animated by a movement of contraction/dilation and continues to integrate its own waste (cosmic conscious, conceptual derivation and other pollutions) in the residual space of a contemporary art gallery.

in MAP, Tout Ranger, Hiver 2003.

Biography

Bibliography

VIDEOSPREAD