Institut d’art contemporain, Villeurbanne/Rhone-Alpes present Manfred Pernice fiat(lux) open 6 December 2013–23 February 2014, the largest solo exhibition in France to date by German artist Manfred Pernice. Over fifty artworks showing the breadth and scope of his œuvre have been brought together, some of which were produced especially for the exhibition.
The title of the exhibition, fiat(lux), evokes the work FIAT, an initial version of which was created in 1997. Since then, the work has been combined in various ways. At the IAC, the visitor literally traverses this monumental sculpture from the first room, following the genesis of an evolving work that guides us towards a set of artworks representing over twenty years of work.
Since the 1990s, Manfred Pernice has developed sculptural and installation work based on an accumulation of budget materials (chipboard, concrete, bricks, metal etc.) combined with found objects and texts, drawings, photographs or, more recently, archive videos, often pertaining to the history of East Germany. Manfred Pernice (re)assembles these “familiar” materials, which thus lose all of their functionality, in what he describes as a kind of “canning” of objects and space.
Drawing on our collective subconscious, he tests the resistance of objects over time—what is remembered and what is forgotten. Broaching both urban design and architecture, networks of commodities and economic processes, history and psychoanalysis, the works and environments of Manfred Pernice often have a precarious and incomplete character and evoke thoroughfares or storage sites that may be either physical or mental.
Manfred Pernice transposes these constructions to various scales, whether they are monumental as for the FIAT work, or on a smaller scale for the Kassetten. These mnemonic sculptures question the relationship between model and reality, becoming reflections of our society and our history.
Simultaneously with the exhibition and in partnership with the IAC, Manfred Pernice’s work is presented at art3 in Valence from December 4, 2013 till February 22, 2014 in a show entitled Idecasa.
Curator:
Nathalie Ergino
In collaboration with Alexander Schröder
Assisted by Anne Stenne
Institut d’art contemporain, Villeurbanne/Rhône-Alpes
11 rue Docteur Dolard
69100 Villeurbanne – France
Hours: Wednesday–Sunday 1–7pm
www.i-ac.eu
