MICHEL COUTURIER

Michel Couturier is fascinated by unlivable places: parking lots, shopping malls, harbour installations. The fundamental intuitive idea behind his work is that these places are like a magnifying mirror of the public space. These places are like ‘forest of signs’ those of power and alienation), a substituted nature. To reclaim the contemporary world and turn it into the space of singular experiences, we must resist the great authoritarian searchlight of power and be attentive, look for the remnants of counterforces, which, like fireflies in the dark, are only visible when we look for them. The work of Michel Couturier inscribes itself in this dialectic of domination and survival.

Michel Couturier describes the contemporary landscape through photography, drawing and video. In the cities and their peripheries, he is particularly interested in objects such as antennas, billboards, lighting towers, security fences, elements that are both strange and familiar. He transforms them, at times into light, at others into forms. He mostly presents his photographs as large format posters that are sometimes placed in the urban space. In his drawings, he isolates fragments of the suburban landscape; by retaining only their shadows and severing them from their primary function, he transforms them into signs. These almost abstract figures become markers of another understanding of the contemporary landscape; new hieroglyphics which we are meant to give meaning.