Michel Verjux
16 February 2023
Michel Verjux
Michel Verjux, born in 1956 in Chalon-sur-Saône in France, has made a name for himself as an artist with performances as well as video and multimedia installations. From 1976 to 1979, he also worked as an actor, director and lighting technician in the theatre. Since 1983 at the latest, he has devoted himself to the art of light or illumination, for which he is now internationally known and appreciated. Since 1996, he has also been a full professor of art and science at the Sorbonne University in Paris.
The installations – for which Verjux is mainly known – make use of light as a central element. Light is Verjux’s artistic tool. He uses it in the context of found architecture, which is thus incorporated into the work. His works are therefore in situ. They exist only in the situation in which the artist has created and installed them and are not transferable to other situations and other places. Each installation is unique.
As a light source, Verjux uses chaser spotlights, as they are also used in the theatre. Depending on their technical nature, they provide light of high or low intensity and different spreads, depending on what the artist needs to meet the requirements of the environment. His formal language is characterised by simple geometric contours, mostly circles or squares.
Dr. Dorothea van der Koelen has known Michel Verjux since 1989 and has worked with him since the 1990s. A catalogue produced in 2008 documents the collaboration on the basis of the exhibition In Front of Our Eyes, which took place in the same year. For the opening of the Cadoro – Centre for Art and Science, the artist installed one of his famous lighting interventions, which adorns the building to this day.
