Michel François’s enigmatic art functions in those gray areas between such oppositions as nature/culture, interior/exterior, private/public, and fragility/strength. Assembling all manner of materials and objects—plaster casts, videos, newspaper clippings, photographs, flowers, even water—into large-scale, site-specific installations, the artist blurs the distinction between institutional and intimate space. For the Bern exhibition, organized by Kunsthalle director Bernhard Fibicher, François transforms the five-room gallery into the prototype of a generic “artist’s home.” Fibicher and Haus der Kunst curator Hubertus Gassner penned essays for the catalogue, which documents the installation in both its Bern and (later) Munich incarnations.
