Opening Hours:
Mo–Fr 10–19 h
Sa 10–16 h

JEAN-MICHEL ALBÉROLA

Born 1953 in Saida, Algeria

Painter, Photographer, Sculptor, Filmmaker, Writer

»Dans une pièce conceptuelle, la parole est 'sur', tandis que'en peinture la parole est 'de'. Je veux parler 'de' et 'sur'. Parler deux fois. Un peintre seul ne suffit plus, il faut être trois: un pour la peinture traditionelle, un pour la rupture, et moi. C'est une équipe comme au cinéma, Godard dit que c'est ce qui fait la force du cinéma.« Albérola 1984

( In a conceptual piece the word is »about« while in painting it is« by«. I want to talk about » about« and »by«. Talk twice. A painter alone is not enough, there should be three: one for traditional painitng, one for the breaks and myself. It is like a cinema team,which is what Godard thinks to be the strength of cinema).

Albérola, who was born in Algeria and subsequently naturalized by France, does not work in a chronological way, but by association. His work results from an interest in mythology, literature, art history and philosophy. Hence his theme of 'Susanna and the old men', which Albérola varied in a series of pastel drawings in the late 1980s. Furthermore, from 1992 -93 he did a series of paintings and drawings based on Watteau's 'Gilles', which is one of Albérola's favorite paintings in the Louvre. In 1996, he created a series on Courbet's 'Les Casseurs de Pierres', which was shown at the Raab Gallery the same year, being meant as a kind of »bridge« between Paris and Berlin. Courbet's painting was done in 1849, in 1906 it was bought by the Gemäldegalerie in Dresden where it burnt in the fire of 1945. The next year, the exhibition travelled to the »Musee d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris«,where it was the center part of a one man exhibition. Albérola's series includes eleven works on paper which single out important motifs within Courbet's painting and present them in a contemporary context. At that time the idea of icones of a population is born. Courbet to him certainly is such an outstanding figure in his society, a modern revolutionary, fighting with the means of arts for a more universal approach of people to each other. And he discovers another personality, whose fate is closely connected to France and Germany; Walter Benjamin. Benjamins's famous words:«The more you get away from the center, the more it becomes political« are the key to Alberola's concern, the emigrants in our society, often living under strain in the suburbs of our cities. He calls them »Heimatlose«, people without a home country. In the beginning of the new cycle he centers his attention on Benjamin. But the fate of emigrants unfortunately is very often neither exceptional nor known to us, the more he inquires, the more Alberola discovers waves of tragic destinies among normal people, that have been completely and undeservedly forgotten. Whether he paints Katharina Wächter, a revolutionary of 1848 in Baden/Germany, who emigrates to America later on, or the queen of thieves in Switzerland, Clara Wendel, with not much more material in front of him than old police archive photographies, these people are now vivid through his paintings and become a concern of our own imagination.

EXHIBITIONS (SELECTION)

1975/76 Salon de Toulon (first group show)

1982 Galerie Daniel Templon, Paris

Venice Biennale

1983 Jean- Michel Alberola- Pierre Klossowski: Le bain de Diane- Raab Galerie Berlin

1984 Museum of Modern Art, New York: An International Survey of Recent Painting and Sculpture

Musée des Beaux Arts, Le Havre

1985/86 Musée des Beaux Arts, Le Havre

Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris

Kunsthalle Düsseldorf

1986 Kunstverein und Kunsthalle Frankfurt

1987 County Museum of Art, Los Angeles: Avant-Garde in the Eighties

Centre Pompidou, Paris

Biennale Sao Paulo, Brazil

1990 Musée d'Art Contemporain, Nîmes

Galerie Kaj Forsblom, Helsinki

Galleria Pasquale Trisorio, Naples

Palais des Beaux-Arts, Brussels

Galerie Daniel Templon, Paris

1993 CentrePompidou, Paris

Galerie Daniel Templon, Paris

1994 Galerie Knapp, Lausanne

1995 Fondation Cartier, Paris

1996 Raab Galerie Berlin: Les Casseurs de Pierre

1997 Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, France

1998 Musée d'Art et d'Histoire, Geneva

Musée des Beaux-Arts, Chartres

1999 Weimar: Plakate in der Stadt

2002 Heimatlose Raab Galerie Berlin

2002 Fondation Cartier: a Mural of 40 m