ÜBERSICHTLICHE DARSTELLUNG – Michel Verjux

LIGHT INSTALLATION AT THE PORI ART MUSEUM 28.1. – 12.3.2000

In the early 1980s, the French artist Michel Verjux (b.1956) began to explore the properties of light in the context of art. According to Verjux, light is the most essential element of visual art, involving form, colour and space – the basic elements of painting and sculpture. Verjux=s style became established around 1987, since when he has mainly used a variety of projected light circles, but also square or rectangular areas of intense white light, always in relation to the architecture of the surrounding space.

Verjux=’s light works act as a structuring element in the space, highlighting the space as a whole, but also the details within it – wall surfaces, floors, ceilings, stairs, columns, windows, doorways. Verjux=’s works also serve as concrete illumination of the space, according to the practical function of electric light. The light forms, which follow a basic geometric shape, are, for all their sparseness, rich in associations with exhibition lighting, natural light sources or abstract art forms. The shadows of the viewers moving through the space also become an integral part of the ever-changing work.

Michel Verjux has often spoken of his works as >markers of the exhibition=: light is the only visible sign that here and now we are in a tuned exhibition situation and space, which can be erased in a few seconds by pressing an electric switch. The intensity of the works arises precisely from this possibility of disappearance and disappearance, and from the energy field created by light. Verjux has chosen the German term Übersichliche Darstellung, or >observational representation=, from the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, as the title of his work at the Pori Art Museum to emphasise the realist and empirical nature of his works.

Translated with DeepL.com