The Belgian artist Michel François is very famous in Europe and abroad.  His fame is well deserved.  He is not twenty-five years old but his career has spanned at least as long. 

For his show, Domestic, currently on view at MC in Culver City, the artist recreated sculptural elements that he has worked with over the years and that have appeared alternately in bit parts and starring roles in other of his installations.  These elements read, in some sense, like a magician's bag of tricks; white bead foam, giant hand-rolled cigarettes, gold, chrome, cacti, old rumpled clothing. 

Imagine you are entering the gallery.  The track lights are lowered just above your head miniaturizing the space.  There is a lonely over-splash of chromed steel roughly in the center of the room.  Beyond the lowered lights, imagine two losers, equally matched in a face off.  On one end, which is mirrored on the other end, there is a large block of white bead foam that has a seating area carved out so that you visually understand it as a couch.  On this couch there is a giant hand rolled cigarette.  Next to the couch there is a cactus at about four feet tall.  The cactus is potted in sand and its thorns have been blunted with the small white beads that make up the foam out of which the couch is carved.  On the wall behind the couch there is a map of the world.  Around the border of the map there are all the flags of every country.  The part where the map would be has been painted over with chalkboard paint.  Projected onto this newly created screen is something like a trip into the dark essence of this white bead foam.  The recorded sound plays on the projector - it is at once industrial and acidic. 

Separating the two sets of mirroring objects, there is a 24-karat gold leafed net.  The gold is flaking off the net.  Lodged in the net there are rags, dirty clothes, further evidence that these two losers may be struggling to keep it together. 

The installation is perhaps a bit forlorn and abject but it somehow keeps intact a mysterious genteel formality.  I think that it would be shorting this work significantly to call it uncanny although its elements do not provide for a clearly legible narrative but suggest something definitely fermenting in its cervices.  At the same time, I feel that to call what François is up to "alchemy" is overly generous. Even though the sum of all the parts has its sparkling magnificence, the parts themselves remain intact and apparent.  Other of his works seem to have more of a political bend to them, which makes them easier to draw meaning out of.  For example, his 1999 installation, Bureau Augmente (Expanded Office), at the Jennifer Flay gallery in Paris has several references in it that point to the devaluing and obsolescence that time necessarily forces upon objects. In this installation there are various electronic devices and first generation cell phones littered about the space.  There are also many newspapers - another sculptural element that is reoccurring throughout François's work.

Because Michel François's sculptures are, at this stage in his career, accumulating, multiplying, modifying and reoccurring, it seems necessary to begin to contemplate his body of work as something of an epic of which we have been offered short episodes of over time.  Slowly then, perhaps as long as it took for the narrative to be written it might become decipherable to us.

-Nancy Lupo

(*Images, from top to bottom:  Michel François, Domestic, March 15 - May 10, 2008; MC, Los Angeles; Domestic show card, Courtesy of the artist and MC, Los Angeles.  Michel François, Domestic, March 15 - May 10, 2008; MC, Los Angeles; Domestic (Installation View), 2008, Photo credit: Joel Holmberg, Courtesy of the artist and MC, Los Angeles.  Michel François, Domestic, March 15 - May 10, 2008; MC, Los Angeles; Domestic, 2008, Metal, gold leaf, fabric, Styrofoam, 2 cacti, Styrofoam balls, tobacco, cigarette paper, 2 single-channel DVD projection, maps; Photo credit: Joel Holmberg, Courtesy of the artist and MC, Los Angeles.  Michel François, Domestic, March 15 - May 10, 2008; MC, Los Angeles; Domestic, 2008, Metal, gold leaf, fabric, Styrofoam, 2 cacti, Styrofoam balls, tobacco, cigarette paper, 2 single-channel DVD projection, maps; Photo credit: Joel Holmberg, Courtesy of the artist and MC, Los Angeles. Michel François, Domestic, March 15 - May 10, 2008; MC, Los Angeles; Fonte (Melting), 2008, Chromed steel, 15 x 20 x 1/2 inches, Photo credit: Joel Holmberg, Courtesy of the artist and MC, Los Angeles.)