Theo Mercier
Ghosts and Gods
5 March–11 April 2015
Opening: Wednesday 4 March, 6pm
ArteValori
Foro Buonaparte, 48
20121 Milan
Hours: Monday–Friday 10am–1pm and 3–7pm
T +39 02 36768281
milano [at] artevalori.com
Artevalori is delighted to announce the opening of the first solo show in Milan of Theo Mercier, curated by Karina El Helou and Tatiana Yasinek (Studiocur/Art).
A world of rituals, sacred objects and relics of a civilisation past inhabit Théo Mercier’s exhibition in Milan. As if a secret communication channel with the hereafter were created, Mercier assembles an army of skeletons, gods and ghosts, rendered human and sometimes comical, in the form of sculptures and installations.
Asymptomatic of an era or of an investigation into the conceptual or abstract, Mercier’s opera of scrupulously assembled objects and sculptures provoke multi-cultural references to surrealism, comics, primitivism as well as archaeology and museology. As a passionate collector of objects, Theo transforms with his noticeable sense of humour, found objects into impactful incarnations as his predecessors Yves Tanguy or René Magritte.
The exhibition at Artevalori in Milan is composed of a selection of works emphasising his taste for the archaeological world and its symbols: the ancestral rituals of life after death and magic. Mercier’s trips to Mexico were an important source of inspiration. There, he discovered the use of devotional objects and pagan cults. This interest in the bizarre and the exotic reminds us of the curiosity cabinets of 19th-century collectors. The display of Archaeology for Dogs, for instance, and his alignment of the mini skeletons army titled ironically Liste d’Attente refer to the museology of the past century. But Mercier’s work more viscerally and playfully explores his role as perpetuator of these ancestral rituals refusing to be confined to a repertoire of vanities and skulls, Mercier flirts with the shamanistic.
In this fictive excavation of the past, gods appear but with ugly hairy human noses (Zeus) or large red noses (Moai), as if to ask “why all this drama?” with both titles answering God Knows.
The same question could be asked to the visiting ghosts in the most important piece of the show titled Grand Public. This impressive human-scale installation presents ghosts hidden under white sheets. At first reminding us of children’s cartoons until skeletal hands peeking out from under the sheets bring to mind that behind those cute and funny ghosts wearing sunglasses and running shoes, there is a harsh reality, our common fatal destiny. This comical and melancholic work chooses to prize death through celebration and laughter. As he mentions in one of his interviews with Stephane Correard:
“In my sculptures, I realise that there are always hidden elements that are dissimulated by sheets, fur, spaghetti… And then there is a protruding element—hands, eyes that are literally coming out of the head.(…) perhaps it’s the missing link between life and death…Humans that become skeletons or skeletons that become humans.”
This semi-apocalyptic show is nevertheless a celebration of life with the help of humour and derision. Mercier’s ability to laugh at the most serious of things in a lucid way makes his work a deliciously guilty pleasure.
“Les vivants se sont tus, mais les morts m’ont parlé,
Leur silence infini m’enseigne le durable.
Loin du coeur des humains, vaniteux et troublé.
J’ai bâti ma maison pensive sur leur sable.”
– Comtesse de Noailles, 1913
Theo Mercier (b. 1984) is a critically acclaimed artist who recently moved from Paris to Mexico and was a nominee for the Marcel Duchamp Prize in 2014. Graduating from l’Ecole Nationale Supérieure de Création Industrielle in Paris in 2005, he later worked as an assistant in Mathew Barney’s studio in 2008.
Since Le Solitaire, a spaghetti monster shown at the Musée de l’art Moderne de la Ville de Paris in 2010, Mercier has taken part in a series of solo and group shows at museums and biennials. He continues to develop work in relation to ethnography, using African masks, and more recently wrote a punk opera where audience members could finally hear his monsters speak in a psychedelic atmosphere; unsurprising that theatre would also serve as his mode of expression.
For more information, please contact Tatiana Yasinek: T +39 02 36768281
