Palais de Tokyo is inviting Jean-Michel Alberola, one of the best-known and most mysterious French artists of his generation, to put on a large-scale solo show, the first in Paris since his retrospective at the Musée d’art moderne de la Ville de Paris, almost 20 years ago. 

By presenting a large number of new pieces in a dialogue with his previous creations, the exhibition sets out to map the little-known diversity of Jean-Michel Alberola’s work and initiates a journey stimulating both the eyes and the mind.

The artist employs both fragmentation and superimposition, marrying plastically the word to the language of forms. Through paintings, neon lights, films, texts, objects, installations, sculptures, murals, publications and tracts, Jean-Michel Alberola composes philosophical rebuses which question history and the state of world (including the migratory issues which have been present in his work for over 10 years, the consumer society, or capitalism) on one hand and our thinking about art’s role in society on the other hand.

Each piece of the show can be read as one detail in a rebus. Intrinsically autonomous, their presence together nonetheless creates the meaning of a large assembly.