Mathieu Mercier

Born in 1970, Mathieu Mercier graduated from the ENS Bourges and the Paris Institute of Higher Studies in Plastic Arts. After being awarded the Marcel Duchamp Prize in 2003 followed by a solo exhibition at the Centre Pompidou, all of his work was exhibited at the City of Paris Museum of Modern Art/ARC in 2007 and again at the Nuremberg Kunsthalle in 2008. Several important exhibitions have been dedicated to him since then, at CREDAC in Ivry (2012), at FRI-ART (Fribourg) 2012, at the Fondation Ricard (2012), at the St Gallen Kunstmuseum (2014), at the Villa Merkel in Esslingen (2014), at Le Portique art centre of Le Havre (2018) and at the Frac Normandie Caen in 2019.
His work has also been represented by the Mehdi Chouakri (Berlin), Massimo Minini (Brescia), Lange & Pult (Zurich) and Albarrán-Bourdais (Madrid) galleries. From the outset, Mathieu Mercier has been reflecting on the definition of the place of the object, both in the consumer industry and in the field of art. His research is reflected in a continuous questioning of the symbolic and utilitarian functions of objects.

Alongside his practice, he has organised numerous exhibitions: the Ricard Corporate Foundation prize in 2007, at the BHV in 2010 with Bernard Marcadé and at 2011 at the Frac Basse-Normandie, while in 2013 he put together a retrospective exhibition of Christian Babou at the Frac Aquitaine. A selection of his personal collection was shown at the Vélizy art centre under the title monochromes et readymades in 2014. He has worked extensively on an edited version of Marcel Duchamp's boîte en valise published by Walther König.