nicolasmanenti@yahoo.de
http://nicolasmanenti.blogspot.com
http://nicolasmanenti.com
Solo Exhibitions
2012 Black Monday, Cyart Gallery, Seoul2009 Was kann ich fur sie Tun, FMAB Galerie, BERLIN/D
Solarium, AFThotwt..., BERLIN/D
Selected group shows
2011 Why we walk, 91mQ, BERLIN/D (co-Curator)
Wunderkammer, Lage 3/20, BERLIN/D
Project Kunstaktien, Uferhallen, BERLIN/D
Galerie Thomas Craemer in Art Amsterdam, AMSTERDAM/NL (Catalogue)
2010 5e Panorama de la jeune creation, BOURGES/F. (Catalogue)
As deep as you can, Schwimmhalle Pankow, BERLIN/D
Das Schonste im Leben, Pilotenkuche, LEIPZIG/D (co-Curator)
Part-time Playtime, 91mQ, BERLIN/D
Schwerinblicke, Staatlisches Museum, SCHWERIN/D. (Catalogue)
A tree full of birds, FMAB & Mikrowesten @Formwerk, ESKILSTUNA/S
Neujahrsausstellung, Galerie Richard Sorge, BERLIN/D
2009 Ma valise a Berlin, Institut Francais, BERLIN/D
Ich komme spater, 91mQ, BERLIN/D
25P, Niagara, NEW YORK/USA.
#51, Limbus Europa, BERLIN/D
XIVe Biennale BJCEM, SKOPJE/MK. (Catalogue)
A funny thing Happened on the way to... (AFThotwt...), BERLIN/D
Duck & Cover, 3rd Tease Art Fair, COLOGNE/D. (Catalogue)
2008 Missverstandnisse, Deutsches Kommunikationsmuseum, FRANKFURT-AM-MAIN and
BERLIN/D.
BAZAAR: Zur Strategie des Risikos, 5.Berliner Kunstsalon, BERLIN/D
BOOK is a book drawing by numbers, Galerie Lendroit, RENNES/F. (Publication)
Die Zahl, Der Zufall, Das Spiel, Kunstverein Rugen, PUTBUS/D.
No admittance except on business, Galerie Tmp.deluxe, BERLIN/D.
Publications
2011 Dans l´ordre, in Degrades, collective publication, Editions 36 du mois, LYON/ F.
2008 La societe du Spectacle, in BOOK is a book drawing by numbers, Galerie Lendroit,
RENNES/F.
Others
since 2011 represented in Berlin by the Gallery Thomas Craemer:
http://galerie-craemer.com/index.php?inc=artists/nicolasmanenti_pub.php
2009-2011 Member of the art project space 91mQ: artistic direction,
organisation and logistic.
http://www.91mq.org/
Notes on a Long Garden Leave
Sunshine Wong(Critic)
Leaving a job may not mean that all ties with
your company are neatly severed; to ensure confidentiality of company information,
you can be subjected to a paid but workless period upon resigning, a so-called
“garden leave” during which you are only an employee by contract but do not
render any services. Wandering the empty spaces of an office block,
Berlin-based French artist Nicolas Manenti worked the graveyard shift as a
security guard. It was as if he were put on perpetual garden leave: a member of
staff only nominally, without the opportunity to produce anything.
To be in a place depleted of activity with
only the traces of absent colleagues (empty chairs, mute telephones,
tea-stained mugs) as company, Manenti began to perfect the art of killing time
by trying to make sense of the deserted space. The tragicomic white-collar
antihero emerges for the first time in these short video
<Interludes>(2001-2002). The bureaucentric continues to feature heavily
throughout his work, with an ever-expanding cast of characters sampled from
posed “at-work” stock photography. Each of the 9-to-5ers in the <Save our
Jobs>composites (2008-ongoing) have been resketched by hand and re-imagined
in absurd or perverse professional situations. In a fell swoop of light, ironic
gestures, he transforms the office - ordinarily regulated by hierarchy and
constant performance anxieties exerted from the top down - into a parody of
itself.
Delves into labour as such, personally
undergoing mind-numbing, repetitious activity as a method of contemplation.
Company holidays stamped chronologically on an endless roll of fax paper
(<Betriebsferien>(2011)) clearly hearkens to On Kawara’s iconic devotion
to timekeeping. Where Kawara’’s statement of date and time are grave, the
stamped durations in Manenti’s piece are despite his best efforts imprecise and
prone to error, undermining the idea of exactitude by its very attempt. Similarly,
Guy Debord’s 『La société du spectacle』 - a seminal text on mass media and the death of authenticity - is
copied over by hand, reducing it to an illegible representation of itself
(<La société du spectacle copied over itsef>(2008-2010)). Debord foretold
how the power of images and reproductions would far exceed that of the real,
much like how the three office plants in Manenti’’s <Angenagelt>(2008)
are denied their form and forcibly flattened in a cruel attempt to represent
them. It is an artistic process that both relies upon and subjugates reality,
which is a tension that reappears in many of Manenti’s installations that deconstruct
what are ordinarily regulated spaces; the usual components are present but
amok, believable but irrational.
Summarising Manenti’s practice was never
going to be a simple task. His work would be mistaken for being an easy
punchline attacking our workaholic sensibilities when in fact it offers a
layered, dialectical critique on social order. Parrying our perceptions on
greatness, authenticity, and industriousness with wit, the joke’s ultimately on
us.
