Grey Matter, Daniel Firman’s first major personal exhibition in a museum, reveals all the facets of his work. He has entirely redesigned the exhibition areas to present already "historical" works in association with some previously unseen creations in a highly original scenographic context.
His interest in everything which constitutes sculpture today is composed "in the manner of a music score." From iconographic and choreographic references to questions closely linked to tradition and sculpture (molding, the body, realism), from sound to space and gesture to image, Daniel Firman has created a veritable polyphony which he presents here for the first time.
Wednesday to Sunday, 11am - 6pm
On the 2d and 3r floor of the museum
The artist
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Nom de l'artisteDaniel Firman
Daniel Firman was born in Bron, France in 1966. He lives and worksin Brussels, Lyon, Bordeaux...
More information
With this exhibition, Daniel Firman evokes the multiple meanings of the expression Grey Matter. From neuronal matter to earth as a raw material as well as composite industrial materials, interpreting his work becomes immediately reversible and simultaneous. Without ignoring the use of the color grey in contemporary art, this neutral and substantial reference begs the question: can the same thing be understood in two different ways?
Daniel Firman is primarily a visual artist who constructs ‘presence’. For him, shapes as fragments (of the body, time, an object or a word) are essential. They must be ‘efficient’ whilst simultaneously coping with a principle of image.
Although the appearance of his work echoes back to the traditional questions of a classical sculptor (weight, shape, matter, the body, gravity and modalities of creation) it can also be seen as being completely modern in the way it considers a working area to be space which is linked to life, performance and effort in order to exist within gesture and avoid considering sculpture to be the result of a sculptor’s program.
Over the two levels of macLYON which house the exhibition, the visitor walks along an itinerary that oscillates between visible and invisible objects and human forms, between presence and absence, following a kind of ‘story in sculpture’ which progressively introduces perceptual areas.
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Titre
Je tourne autour de la terre
In the ensemble of works of Je tourne autour de la terre [I turn around the earth] Daniel Firman assumes
a physical presence in the midst of the upheaval by creating the inverted mechanism of a potter’s wheel in which the artist spins around at 33rpm like an astronaut rotating around a mass of incontrollable earth.
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Titre
Molding
The institutional functioning of the museum as a place of permanent visibility is represented by the
molding of a team leader (Christine). She is leaning against a dividing wall and her pose could also suggest the meeting of the invisible bodies of the dancers with the limits of their dance area.
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Titre
Rotomatic
Rotomatic presents an interlocking set of elements which are either in a dynamic or a static dimension relative to each other. Inside the washing machine, the drum is immobile. It is the machine itself which revolves to the rhythm of its various programs, as the drum does according to which function – washing, rinsing or spinning. Rotomatic is part of the macLYON collection.
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Titre
Nasutanamus
The body of the animal floats like a balloon within the space it occupies – reminding us moreover of the form obtained in Movement and the Solos. Its trunk is in contact with the wall. The organ of prehension is that the trunk is holding nothing as it serves uniquely as a meeting point between the taxidermised body and one of the limits of the space it is in.
Informations supplémentaire programmation MAC
360° views of the exhibition
Catalogs
Catalogue Daniel Firman
Date created: 07/13/2020
Changed date: 07/13/2020
Avec des essais de Thierry Raspail (directeur du mac LYON), Emmanuel Latreille (directeur du FRAC Languedoc-Roussillon) et une interview de Daniel Firman par Hou Hanru (commissaire d’expositions et critique d’art).
Co-édition mac LYON / Galerie Perrotin.
Prix : 25 €
Lyon : Musée d'art contemporain, 2013.
204 pages, illustrations en couleur
Edition bilingue : français / anglais
ISBN : 978-88-6208-309-6
