FRANZ ACKERMANN

The new exhibition, his first in four years in Paris, is rooted in the sudden confrontation between the reality of a global pandemic and the artist’s personal observations down the decades on urban geography and space. At the heart of the gallery, a Georgian-inspired tent offers a glimpse of a Persian rug laid casually on the floor in a nod to the many thwarted journeys over the last couple of years. The artist wonders: ‘How did the epidemic restrict our physical freedom? What impact did the pandemic have on our perception of travel and our status as city dwellers?’

His answer is an experimental game playing with imposing ‘mental maps’ that unfurl over several metres. At the back of the gallery, two painted walls and fifteen works–photographs, oils, water colours, acrylics and drawings–offer an almost insolent’ dissonance, a ‘thirst for freedom in a world sorely lacking in it today.’

The basement space, on the other hand, plunges visitors into a striking and chaotic universe: five monumental oil paintings covered in video projections, with a light spectrum that constantly fluctuates between black and colour. Ackermann uses this silent carnival to explore the post-Covid world: ‘In an era of hyper-digitalisation and hyper-information, how do we now perceive the difference between reality and illusion? What has become of experiences described as ‘authentic’?’

Born in 1963, Franz Ackermann lives and works in Berlin and Karlsruhe. He has taken part in numerous major group exhibitions over the last 20 years in Europe, the USA and Japan, including: 2018, Kunstmuseum, Bonn, Germany; 2017, Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia, USA; 2016, Pinacoteca de Sao Paolo, Brazil; 2009, Tate Triennial, London, UK; 2009, Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, USA; 2006, Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin, Germany; 2005, Whitney Museum of Modern Art, New York, USA; 2005, MoMA, New York, USA; 2005, Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, Japan, and 2003, Venice Biennale, Italy. In France, Franz Ackermann’s work has been seen in 2005 at the Biennale d’Art Contemporain in Lyon and Printemps de Septembre in Toulouse, in 2004 at La Maison Rouge and in 2003 at the Palais de Tokyo, both in Paris. The Staatliche Kunsthalle in Karlsruhe (2014) and Berlinische Galerie in Berlin (2013) recently held major solo exhibitions of his work. And in 2018, as part of the renovation of the Miami Beach Convention Center, Franz Ackermann created About Sand, a towering mural for the outer façade of the building.