A former fellow of the Villa Medici in 2013–2014, the artist and director Théo Mercier returns ten years later to the partitions of this place that marked a decisive turning level in his inventive profession to current “BAD TIMING.”

From the outset, the exhibition situation proposed by Théo Mercier appears to be settled. A rain of vehicles crashed within the air on the Piazzale of Villa Medici. Going through the bottom and wings open, these birds with their injured our bodies set free the final breaths of a musical radio that’s tough to listen to. Additional on, a sequence of sculptures of chairs modelled in bronze melting within the solar will be seen right here and there within the constructing. Deserted, deformed, crushed or torn between the burden of a heavy stone and the suction of a helium balloon stretched in direction of the zenith, these sculptures really point out the trail of an enigma that can discover its end result within the inside areas of Villa Medici.

Sheltered from the melancholy of the sky, it’s within the exhibition rooms that result in the traditional cistern that Théo Mercier levels the underground decision of this dystopian state of affairs, impressed by the traditional custom of the Palaces of Reminiscence. The sculptures he invitations to this area of paradoxical reminiscence are hybrid installations made from person home equipment and amputated marble sculptures, from the collections of the Villa Medici. Certain by totally different shibari strategies, this new sequence of borrowed sculptures specific the artist’s sadism and delight of coping with the flamboyant residues of the previous and the post-industrial residues of up to date chaos.

Drawing on his current experiments across the dwelling panorama and efficiency, Théo Mercier conceived this solo exhibition on the Villa Medici within the method of a situation of anticipation, flirting with the museum thriller and the wasteological reminiscence. The invitation turns into for him a gray space of narrative and plastic experimentation during which he intends to carry collectively his two inventive practices, these of sculptor and director. By forcing the gates of time, museums and Rome’s open-air dumps, “BAD TIMING” works to interrupt into the museum’s current to suggest a set of hybrid, humorous and subversive hypotheses, made up of poetic crashes and dysfunctional collisions of supplies, strategies, objects, tales, time and exogenous environments. For it’s maybe within the blind spots of the exhibition that one other query as up to date as it’s historic emerges alongside the best way, that of figuring out with what imaginary of energy our epochs govern and the right way to handle to detect their strings?

at Académie de France à Rome – Villa Medici
till September 25, 2023