Jean-Michel Alberola
The Kings of Nothing and the Years 1965-1966-1967
Jean-Michel Alberola marks his return to the City of Light with a protean exhibition that takes us on different journeys with its combination of new painted walls, canvases and works on paper.
Exhibition views
The Kings of Nothing and the Years 1966-1967-1968
TEMPLON Paris, 2024
We encounter the irresistible Rois de Rien [Kings of Nothing, Émeutes de Watts [Watts Riots], Tatlin and other abstraction works, which adorn the walls of the ground floor, plunging the visitor headfirst into the artist’s poetic, engaged and humorous universe. Hanging side by side, Alberola’s works form a series of philosophical puzzles questioning the perspective of artists and their role in society.
The basement continues the exploration the artist initiated in Brussels in March 2023 with 1965-1966-1967. “A turning point heralding the explosiveness of politics in the 1970s,” explains the artist. “Those three years still had a sense of freedom, before money began to infiltrate the artistic domains of the music and film industries in the late 1960s. People realised that counter-culture could be sold. That’s when everything changed.”
Alberola has spent around two years gathering, annotating, rubbing out and re-writing in charcoal or blue and ochre pastel a multitude of information about this era. These drawings, hang shoulder to shoulder, build bridges with the present.
The Years 1966-1967-1968
Series
2022-2023
The artist
Born in 1953 in Saïda, Algeria, Jean-Michel Alberola lives and works in Paris. During his thirty-year career he has produced a protean body of work that straddles figurative, abstract and conceptual art. Gouaches, sculptures, artists’ books and films represent the different facets of his exploration of the fragility of beauty, ambiguity of perception, the role of the artist and the purpose of art. With the mixture of humour and lyricism characteristic of an engaged artist, he combines artistic reflections with political and social questions.
