Mathieu Mercier

The Massimo Minini Gallery is delighted to announce the third exhibition by Mathieu Mercier
(France, 1970).
Mercier’s work analyses the role of objects in art and their links with the environment from whence they
come, with emphasis on the symbolic yet practical function of consumer products, investigating their
interwoven relations with design, architecture, modernity and beyond, and highlighting their social and
political roles.
Oscillating between Constructivism, Minimalism and Geometric Abstraction, the artist creates close
relations with items of daily use, recreating them and re-proposing them in different contexts and with
different approaches as if to free them from the usual, commonly accepted cognition. By implementing
an ironic yet critical reflection of the rigid schemes of modernist matrix generated by post-industrial
society, Mercier creates sculptures and paintings by recycling ordinary objects, observing them from
new vantage points, and playing with the ambiguity of their meaning. This blend of often contradictory
elements invites the onlooker to read them in different ways and experience varying sensations.
The works on display are hybrid objects, very close to sculpture and minimal design, created using
essential materials and based on pure geometric lines. Mercier also proposes perforated paintings and
white structures that are reminiscent of men’s shirts. His previous exhibition in 2004 featured large
metal columns painted with the same paint used for car bodywork that appear to link the floor and
ceiling of the gallery, utopistically supporting the latter; this exhibition has brightly coloured tubes
placed on the ground, like fallen trees in an imaginary technological wood, or imposing designer objects
to be used for sitting on. It is once again an invitation for the spectator to review his ideas and
preconceptions, and open up his mind to multiple interpretations.