Born in 1984 at Paris, France.

Lives and works between Mexico and Paris.

Casado_Santapau presents “Tension Intension” second solo exhibition by Théo Mercier in the gallery.

As a true autodidact, Théo Mercier has claimed since his beginnings a great formal freedom, working to build the mechanisms of a history of art and objects in which he builds again harmonious contradictions similar to contemporary apocryphal stories. Mercier imposes paradox, strangeness and humor as a plastic point of view. The result is an overflowing work, a cosmogony populated by dystopian myths, iconoclastic sculptures and exquisite corpses in which images and clichés, dominant and dominated discourses, fantasies, unconscious and collective representations confront each other in an orderly cacophony.

The exhibition presents sculptures in precarious balances, games of movement, risks and traps. These are newly created works and compositions by Théo, based on materials and objects that have been part of his work for many years: natural stone, terracotta, carved stone. Two new techniques are also included: bronze and rope.

With bronze, a tension is presented between the soft and the solid that speaks of the sedimentation and fossilization of humanity in matter, but also of the relationship of strength and resistance between human beings and their environment, of the inevitable questions of survival, transformation, adaptation and eradication that are linked to human activities, and perhaps also to global warming.

With the rope technique, he creates tension between seemingly eclectic objects. It also makes it possible to create a network of illusions, a system of cause and effect, a mysterious mechanism. Everything could be a representation or simply an allegory of the precarious and sometimes senseless balance of things in the world.

Overall, the sculptures in the exhibition have a very theatrical feel, transforming the gallery into a dynamic space where all the works seem to play and respond to each other. This must be understood in the context of Théo’s work as a stage director.

Taking the world and his travels as the raw material of his work, Théo Mercier conducts a reflection at the crossroads of anthropology, geopolitics and tourism. Between choreographed stagings and explorations of raw material, he combines a practice of creator and collector, through which he establishes a rich exchange between past, present and future, life and death, animate and inanimate, true and false, artisanal and industrial, profane and sacred, real and fiction. Most of Théo Mercier’s pieces are the result of a work of anthropomorphization of objects -from findings, assemblages, precarious stacking or grafting- which he almost always creates in series, constituting true communities.

Born in Paris in 1984, Théo Mercier currently lives and works between Paris, Marseille (France) and Mexico City. Claiming formal freedom, Mercier sets out to deconstruct the mechanisms of history, objects and representations, in which he finds harmonious contradictions.

Explorer, collector, curator and artist, he leads a reflection situated at the crossroads of anthropology, geopolitics, tourism and landscape. Resident at Villa Medici in 2013 and nominated for the Marcel-Duchamp Prize in 2014, Théo Mercier has also won the Silver Lion at the 2019 Venice Biennale for Dance with Steven Michel, the Art of Change 21 Prize and the Jury Prize for the French Pavilion at the 2023 Prague Quadrennial with Céline Peychet. In 2022, he was awarded the Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres by the French Ministry of Culture.

As a stage director, his shows have been presented at Nanterre-Amandiers, the Festival d’Automne, La Villette, the Ménagerie de verre and the Centre Pompidou (Paris), the Festival d’Avignon, the Theater Spektakel (Zurich), Vidy (Lausanne), La Bâtie (Geneva), Usine C (Montreal), The Invisible Dog Art Center (New York), the Festival Actoral (Marseille), the Vooroit Art Center (Ghent) and the Short Theater (Rome), among others.

Théo Mercier has had solo exhibitions at Villa Médicis, Rome (2023); Prague Quadrennial, Prague (2023); Conciergerie, Paris (2022); the Luma Westbau, Zurich (2022); Collection Lambert, Avignon (2021); Le Portique, Le Havre (2021); the XIII Biennial of Havana, Cuba (2019); Musée de la Chasse et de la Nature, Paris (2019); Museo El Eco, Mexico City (2017); Musée de l’Homme, Paris (2017); Musée d’art Contemporain, Marseille (2016); Lieu Unique, Nantes (2013); and Tri Postal, Lille (2012), among others.

He has also participated in numerous group exhibitions at international institutions such as Le Parvis, Tarbes (2022); Musée de la Vieille Charité, Marseille (2022); Pouchkine Museum, Moscow (2021); West Bund Museum, Shanghai (2021); Musée du Quai Branly, Paris (2021); Jameel Arts Center, Dubai (2019); Fonds Hélène et Edouard Leclerc, Landerneau (2019); Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin (2018); Palacio de Bellas Artes, Mexico City (2018); FRAC Bretagne, Rennes (2018); Museum of the Archaeological Site of Baalbek, Lebanon (2016); MAC VAL, Vitry-sur-Seine (2015); and Centre Pompidou, Paris (2013).