BIO

François Nussbaumer was born in 1958. He lives and works in Strasburg.

Solo shows: 2011 : Galerie Heine, Strasbourg - 2010 : CastanGalerie, Perpignan - 2008: Hôtel du Département, Strasbourg (“Portraits 1987 – 2007”) - 2007: Loft galerie, Strasbourg - Centre Culturel Franco Allemand, Karlsruhe.

Group shows: 2010 : CastanGalerie, Perpignan (“Mise en Cène”) - Espace à Vendre, Southart Nice (“Le Salon de l’Auto”) – Fotofever, Paris (Galerie Heine) - 2007: Musée d’art moderne et contemporain, Rijeka, Croatie (“Le corps comme spectacle”) - FRAC Alsace Sélestat (“Drôle de Je”).

ABOUT HIM

“Migration 1" shows us a series of car wrecks in different positions, in different states of decomposition, and have the only common thing of being completely lost.
The decor is systematically a desert ;I don't know which and I don't think that it is of any importance.
Instead of showing the desolation of trash of our consumer's society in a wide landscape, Nussbaumer puts boldly the cars on the foreground. The infinity of the natural space is pushed back afar.
Moreover, an artificial light enlightens the wrecks, which creates a tension between what is natural and what is fake une tension. The photographer insists so much on this aspect that we look at a photography, not reality.
He does not create an atmosphere but rather invites us to think.

Ambivalence ou antitheses comparable are shown to us with “Les Glorieuses”, a series of abandoned gas stations like we can see in provincial France- and elsewhere.
They are miserable, shabby. Some have even disappeared, and are recognisable (or should I say, eventually, imaginable?) only thanks to some traces still on the surface of the destroyed parcels. Whoever stops their travel there to fill up or rest gott the wrong adress."

Leo Jansen, Amsterdam's Van Gogh museum Paintings department's Custodian.

EDITIONS

François NUSSBAUMER

"WAY TO GO"
october 2008 96 p.
(format 21 x 28)
aRTHENON éditions, Strasburg. Preface by Léo Jansen.

VIDEO