Nicolas Muller (France / Switzerland, 1983) is interested in the edges, the interstices, the reverse side of the decoration. In this carte blanche offered to the artist by Musée Ariana, he evokes nature and the tangible reality of ceramic and glass collections using the techniques that are his own or that he has developed on this occasion.
In the museum's storage rooms, his attention was drawn to crumpled tissue paper used to support artworks during transportation, to embossed and garland-shaped doilies used to protect a stack of plates from friction, to post-its and handwritten notes that give a fleeting indication of an object or its absence, and to the imprints of artworks in the panelling of the rolling shelves.
With the help of drawings, videos or installations, whose poetic handwriting is powerfully inscribed in the exhibition spaces, he tells of the object, its hidden side, its change and its absence. The relationship to the collection is omnipresent: the rolls of paper rubbed with a blue pencil echo the patterns painted with cobalt oxide on Chinese porcelain; the rubberized wall speaks of wear and the effect of time on matter. Nicolas Muller's artistic practice is like the developer for a photograph: without appearing to, he forcibly touches the essential.
November 3, 2023 to September 22, 2024
