HUMAN BREATH 

MICHA LAURY

Micha Laury’s solo show Human Breath does not aim to be a retrospective, but rather a "return to the roots". To the sources of the work, since the exhibition combines historic drawings from the 1960s - which paved the way for the installations and performances that would develop over the following 60 years - with recent, previously unseen sculptural works. But ultimately, it takes us back to the "beginnings of life", where Micha Laury's childhood memories meet the origins of Humanity. 

Micha Laury, to be in the world

Ever since the late 60s, Micha Laury has placed the human body at the very heart of his preoccupations. A generic figure in search of its own place in space, as shown by a whole series of drawings which are fundamental to his approach. Over the years, this self-taught artist has developed a reflection in the light of his own history and feelings, combining memories and personal experiences in a body of work that is both eclectic in form and palimpsestic in iconography. 

He was raised and grew up in a kibbutz, isolated from all artistic contact and knowledge. 

As a child, he was impressed by the mud houses of the neighboring village, which seemed

on the verge of collapse. 

He was expelled from his art school for refusing to undertake the mandatory exercise of painting flowers:

he then decided to devote himself to art. 

One of his first drawings, entitled I Don’t Know What to Do (1967), depicts him with his face resting

in the palm of his hand, wondering - a drawing with a symbolic and long-lasting significance. 

After discovering a small book on Marcel Duchamp, he went to Philadelphia and stayed all day

at the museum, fascinated by the enigmatic complexity of the artist’s approach.

He created numerous performances, conceived first and foremost as workshop exercises,

challenging the limits of the body - of his own body.

Driven by his curiosity to see the fossilized bones of Lucy, the 3.2-million-year-old australopithecus

discovered in 1974, he travelled to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, and has since incorporated a whole series

of drawings related to this experience into his work. 

He intends to make a film in which, successively at the North and South Poles, he will turn on himself

for 24 hours in opposition to the Earth’s rotation, thus remaining stationary compared

to the axis of the galaxy - a sort of symbolic resistance to the universe.

Using his personal experience to convey universal ideas, Micha Laury - who is an intuitive who thinks - belongs to that category of artists whose life and work are intimately intertwined. Polymorphous, his art embraces all kinds of visual approaches - from figuration to abstraction, from drawing to volume, from performance to installation - as well as a wide range of protocols and materials - pencil, ink, watercolour, ceramics and so on. His off-the-beaten-track work is driven by a quest for origin, seeking the very essence that constitutes his identity. If the human figure and the house are the two cardinal themes, it’s because they condense the very history of humanity. 

From one end of the time chain to the other, Micha Laury’s approach - which continuously plays and replays the ebb and flow of memory - is nourished by everything the artist has lived through, observed, exchanged and so on. Featuring works from the very beginning of his career as well as more recent ones, this exhibition, though it doesn’t recount the narrative details, composes a dazzling summary - a kind of anthology, which acknowledges the artist’s sometimes dazzled, sometimes worried presence in the world.

Philippe Piguet

Art historian and critic