836M Gallery in San Francisco proudly presents the first-ever solo exhibition in San Francisco of French artist Eric Michel. Eric Michel has worked in various mediums throughout his career—which has included work in international finance and stints as a musician—but his main focus for many years has been on light and light installations.

La Lumière Parle(in English, The Light Speaks) features close to thirty works, including twenty-two photographs explicitly produced for the show, a mural, four light sculptures/installations, and videos. He has transformed the gallery environment, redirecting available light from skylights, windows, and other light sources onto walls and other surfaces. 836M, which began in 2013 when it exhibited Banksy’s The Haight Street Rat, is known for showcasing local and international artists, focusing on those who build a bridge between Paris and San Francisco. La Lumière Parle certainly qualifies as what gallery owners Sébastien and Julie Lépinard and the gallery curator Agnès Faure refer to in their native French as a “coup de coeur” project, which loosely translates to “things we love.”

La Lumière Parle (The Light Speaks) is the gallery’s first exhibit dedicated to light and space. The objective of the show is to produce what Eric Michel calls a “total work,” one that includes light, colors, and sound in dialogue with both the gallery and surrounding office/workspace—creating a sense of harmony through various media: fluorescent sculpture, photography, painting, video and colored films tinting natural and artificial light throughout the day.

For his part, Eric Michel has long looked forward to mounting a solo exhibition on the West Coast as an opportunity to show work in the birthplace of light art and continue the tradition blazed by such artist heroes as James Turrell, Dan Flavin, and Doug Wheeler.

THE BOATMAN

I am in love with light.

It is the most favored medium of my sensitivity, of my work.

It flows in our lives, it irrigates our universe.

It opens the door.

Light has this unique feature, to be both corpuscular and undulatory in nature, both material and immaterial.

And for me, the artist shall be a boatman, precisely from the material toward the immaterial, from the real toward the imaginary, toward pure sensitivity.

What a better vector than light to achieve this goal?

Light as medium then, but why not as a finality?

Did I really choose light? Didn’t it impose itself upon me?

Light talks.

I hear it,

Sometimes.

Eric, Roma 2007

“Light is what flows through our lives, it irrigates our universe, and because light as a quantum object is both corpuscular and undulatory, material and immaterial, it is the perfect medium for me. Light talks. I hear it.”

—ERIC MICHEL