François Curlet. Frozen Feng Shui

"Industrial form likes the cut-out, likes being selected, reproduced, distributed – to the four winds. To achieve this it relies on offcuts. In the wings these shadowlike counterforms are reborn as actors and extras on the taut copper of metallic canvases, as ectoplasms of the productive unconscious. Sprayed and stencilled, a dash of blush arrays them on the screen in a genial performance. These ghosts of productivity flutter to a silent melody in a Quality Street art deco ambience."
François Curlet, Décembre 2015

François Curlet, December 2015
Born in Paris in 1967, François Curlet lives and works in the village of Piacé and Paris. His third solo exhibition is taking place simultaneously at Air de Paris (15.01 > 27.02.2016) and at the Mehdi Chouakri Gallery in Berlin (21.01 > 27.02.2016). Set up mainly in one or two corners of the venues, it explodes then gives fresh resonance to the idea of the white cube. Curlet’s art has often been described in terms of kinship or affinity with that of such artists as Marcel Broodthaers, Jef Geys and Andreas Slominski: quirky, incisive and deliciously sassy, Curlet has the same recourse to associations of objects, ideas, games, words and places. Thus this new solo show – which also, all-embracingly, gives its title to each of its series – tests our knowledge and our capacity to resist this «Frozen» Feng Shui by calling on «Cupcakes», «Waffles», «Pepitos», «Spe- culoos», «Chipsters» and other bona fide parapsychological objects to embody a certain idea of painting. François Curlet has had numerous solo exhibitions in France and Europe, in venues including the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, Le Plateau/Frac Île de France and the Regional Centre for Contemporary Art in Sète. Scheduled for the near future are shows at MuHKA in Antwerp and BOZAR in Brussels. His work has been acquired by leading public collections in France and Europe, among them the Centre Pompidou, Tate Modern, Grand Hornu in Belgium and the Van Abbe Museum in the Netherlands... On the occasion of the opening, Air de Paris is also pleased to announce the lauching of «Speed Limit», François Curlet’s new book printed by Editions BHV, Berline-Hubert-Vortex et Cyrille Putman, Paris which describes the transformation of a «Jaguar Type E» into an hearse and plays the main role in the cult film «Jonathan Livingstone».