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Concept
Michel François (artist)
Summary
Michel François (born 1956 in Saint-Trond) is a Belgian conceptual artist.
Born in a family of artists, Michel François studied theatre then graduated from the École de Recherche Graphique in Brussels.
Since the start of his career as an artist in the early 1980s, he exhibited his work throughout Europe, the United States, Mexico, Brazil, and Japan.
Michel François took part in two key events in contemporary art, Documenta 9 in Kassel in 1992 and the 48th Venice Biennale, in 1999, where he represented Belgium alongside Ann Veronica Janssens with the installation Horror vacui. This granted him international recognition.
In the 1990s, Michel François was represented in Paris by Jennifer Flay's gallery. Since 2011, he works with the Galerie Kamel Mennour.
The first monographic and retrospective exhibition of the artist, at a key moment in his career, took place ten years later, in 2009, with Plans d'évasion, organized by SMAK Ghent and the Institut d'art contemporain de Villeurbanne.
In 2012, Michel François produced a personal exhibition at the CRAC Occitanie, Pièces à conviction, at the same time as he presented his works on paper at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris.
In 2023, Brussels' BOZAR organised a 40-year retrospective on his work, entitled Contre Nature.
Michel François has exhibited his work widely acrosss Europe. Since 2009, he has taught at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris and also collaborates regularly with choreographers (Pierre Droulers, Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker).
He lives and works in Brussels, Belgium.
In 1985 he met Ann Veronica Janssens, with whom he lived and worked for some 30 years, before separating. Their daughter, Léone François, is a Belgian actress.
His art explores a variety of media including installation, video, sculpture and photography. The materials of his work can be either man-made (glass, bricks, gypsum, aluminium foil, polistyrene, newspapers) or natural (leaves, cactus, water, dandelions). The objects that he manipulates assume figurative and dynamic functions.
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