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Opening July 4, 2026, from 6pm.
The show will be open on the same day from 11am.
With works by:
Caroline Achaintre
Julien Audebert
Pierre Bellot
Michel Blazy
Nina Childress
Jeremy Deller
Michel François
Corentin Grossmann
Miryam Haddad
Kate Newby
Tania Pérez Córdova
Roman Signer
Jeremy Deller, The Battle of Orgreave (still), 2001. Video with sound. Courtesy of Artangel and Channel 4. Photo: Parisa Taghizadeh.
The international group exhibition Radikale Hoffnung (Radical Hope) explores the connections between art and worker resistance from early Modernism to the present day. It demonstrates how artists from different regions and eras have addressed such issues—whether from a documentary, poetic, critical, radical or solidarity-based perspective, as well as in reference to their own personal experience.
Curator: Florence Derieux
Vue d’exposition / Installation view: Michel François, 2026, Art : Concept, Paris/FR. Courtesy the Artist and Art : Concept, Paris. Photo Objets pointus
Art : Concept is pleased to welcome Michel François to the gallery’s roster of artists.
Born in Sint-Truiden (Belgium) in 1956, Michel François lives and works in Brussels. Since the 1980s, he has developed a body of work in which sculpture serves as a structuring practice, inspiring photography, video, art installations, performance, curatorial projects, and, more recently, painting. This freedom in the choice of medium is matched by a rigorous reflection on space, matter, volume, and the conditions under which forms appear and disappear.
Vue de l’exposition / Exhibition view Plans d’évasion, 2010, IAC, Villeurbanne/FR. Photo : Blaise Adilon
Vue de l’exposition / Exhibition view Plans d’évasion, 2010, IAC, Villeurbanne/FR. Photo : Blaise Adilon
Vue de l’exposition / Exhibition view Contre Nature, 2023, Bozar, Bruxelles/BE. Photo : Isabelle Arthuis
Vue de l’exposition / Exhibition view Contre Nature, 2023, Bozar, Bruxelles/BE. Photo : Mina Albespy
Vue de l’exposition / Exhibition view Contre Nature, 2023, Bozar, Bruxelles/BE. Photo : Isabelle Arthuis
Vue de l’exposition / Exhibition view Contre Nature, 2023, Bozar, Bruxelles/BE. Photo : Isabelle Arthuis
Vue de l’exposition / Exhibition view Contre Nature, 2023, Bozar, Bruxelles/BE. Photo : Isabelle Arthuis
Plâtre, polystyrène, verre, acier / Plaster, polystyrene, glass, steel, 53 × 57 × 20 cm
Vue de l’exposition / Exhibition view Contre Nature, 2023, Bozar, Bruxelles/BE. Photo : Isabelle Arthuis
Vue de l’exposition / Exhibition view Plans d’évasion, 2010, IAC, Villeurbanne/FR. Photo : Blaise Adilon
Vue de l’exposition / Exhibition view Plans d’évasion, 2010, IAC, Villeurbanne/FR. Photo : Blaise Adilon
Michel François (born in 1956), lives and works in Brussels, Belgium.
Fascinated by the gestures of everyday life and the tensions that they reveal, François has distinguished himself, since the 1980s, through a unique practice in which disorder and ambiguity reign. In parallel to
his photographs being published as posters, and then in books format, the artist developped a specificapproach to sculpture and installation, where his works and images are often grouped, accumulated, and re-contextualized.
He has exhibited throughout Europe and abroad, including Documenta IX in Kassel (1992), the XXIInd Biennale de São Paulo (1994), the Kunsthalle in Bern (1999), the 48th Venice Biennale (1999), where he represented Belgium alongside Ann Veronica Janssens, Art Pace Foundation in San Antonio, Texas (2004), SMAK in Ghent and the IAC in Villeurbanne for Plans d’évasion (2009–2010), Mac’s at Grand Hornu for 45.000 affiches (2011), IKON Birmingham for Pieces of Evidence (2014), La Verrière, Hermès in Brussels for Philaetchouri with Ann Veronica Janssens (2015), the Biennale d’art contemporain in Rennes (2016), Wiels in Brussels for Le musée absent (2017), the Halle Verrière and the Centre International d’Art Verrier in Meisenthal for Panoptique (2021), Bozar in Brussels for Contre Nature (2023), and most recently the Palais de Tokyo in Paris for Toucher l’insensé (2024).
His work can be found in many private and public European collections.
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