Mathieu MERCIER
Mathieu Mercier was born in 1970 in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine in Yvelines. He lives and works in Paris.
Mathieu Mercier is a graduate of the École nationale supérieure d’art de Bourges and the Institute of Advanced Studies in Plastic Arts in Paris.
After winning the Marcel-Duchamp Prize in 20031 followed by an exhibition at the Center Pompidou: Le Pavillon2, all of Mathieu Mercier's work was presented at the Museum of Modern Art of the City of Paris/ARC in 2007, then at the Kunsthalle in Nuremberg (de) in 2008.
In the tradition of Duchamp and Mondrian, Mathieu Mercier strives to detect and reveal the place of beauty in everyday objects. His multiple talents as a painter, sculptor, architect, and director have led him to work from objects from mass consumption that we all know but which are then perceived in an aesthetic and artistic way.
The heterogeneous work of Mathieu Mercier plays on the criteria that critical analyzes have used to describe it. Abstraction, objectivity, simulacrum, appropriation, reandy-made, diverted functionalism... They are correct but their enumeration is part of a nomenclature which borders on the absurd. There are references to the human, natural and social sciences, it brings a new perspective on the object.
Since the start of his career, Mathieu Mercier has been thinking about defining the place of the object, both in the consumer industry and in the field of art. His research results in a permanent questioning of the symbolic and utilitarian functions of objects.
