Whether he modifies the lighting in a room by pouring motor oil onto a fluorescent tube or causing a soft yet disturbing black snow to fall on a bourgeois interior, Thomas Teurlai (b. 1988, lives and works in Lyon) is always seeking to transform the environment, however minuscule that intervention may be. Through installations that divert objects from their original function and lead them to poetic and ambivalent new uses, Thomas Teurlai makes the coldest materiality sublime. His work provokes a certain aesthetic pleasure through the familiarity of the presented objects while at the same time causing a sense of doubt with regard to the effect produced by this play on opposites and assemblages.

At Palais de Tokyo, as always in his work, the notion of risk is present, suggested or accepted. The tension is palpable for the visitor who is never far from danger: whether through the muffled vibrations of a glass window or the mysterious technology mimicking a ghost train in the depths of the building, the work of Thomas Teurlai resonates like a form of world re-enchantment.

This exhibition benefits from the support of Safia El Maqui (Monaco).
Acknowledgements: Jeanne Zéler (Bruxelles), Sonia Pastor (Nice), Luc Clément et l’agence Outremer (Nice), la Miroiterie du Rhône (Villeurbanne), le Centre d’Arts Plastiques de St Fons et l’Ecole Nationale Supérieur des Beaux-Arts de Lyon.