Manfred Pernicefiat(lux)in Collaboration with Art3 Art Contemporain, Valence, France

Museum Exhibition

Institut d'art contemporain

Villeurbanne

France

6 Dec 2013 – 23 Feb 2014

fiat(lux)

The IAC presents fiat(lux), the largest solo exhibition to date in France by German artist Manfred Pernice. More than fifty works, some of which were produced for the exhibition, are brought together at the IAC, thus showing the breadth of his work.

The title of the exhibition, fiat(lux), evokes the work FIAT, the first version of which was created in 1997. Since then, it has had several combinations. At the IAC, the visitor literally crosses this monumental sculpture from the first room, genesis of a work in mutation which guides us towards a set of works bringing together more than twenty years of work.

From the 90s, Manfred Pernice developed a work of sculptures and installations based on an accumulation of poor materials (chipboard, concrete, bricks, metal, ...) combined with found objects and texts, drawings, photographs or even more recently archival videos, often of a biographical nature or linked to a historical context. Manfred Pernice assembles these “familiar” materials, which then lose all functionality, a sort of “canning” of objects and space, in his own words.

Appealing to our collective unconscious, it tests the resistance of the object over time, between memory and oblivion. Addressing both urban planning, architecture, the flow of goods and economic processes, passing through history and psychoanalysis, the works and environments of Manfred Pernice often take on a precarious and unfinished character and evoke places passage or storage, both physical and mental.

Manfred Pernice transposes these architectures on different scales, whether monumental for the FIAT work or on a smaller scale for the Kassetten. These mnemonic sculptures question the relationship between model and reality, and become the reflection of our society, of our history.

Manfred Pernice has presented numerous solo exhibitions (To the public, Haus der Kunst, Munich, Germany, 2013; Brei, SMAK, Gent, Belgium, 2011; Witte de With, Rotterdam, Netherlands, 2012; Migrateurs, Museum of modern art, Paris, 1998) and has participated in multiple group exhibitions (Les Priairies, Biennale de Rennes, 2012; Rehabilitation, Wiels, Brussels, Belgium, 2010; Pragmatismus & Romantismus, Fondation d'entreprise Ricard, Paris, 2009; Biennales of Venice in 2003 and 2001, Lyon Biennale in 1997).

—

(Institut d'art contemporain Villeurbanne / Rhône-Alpes)