Michel Journiac (1935-1995) appeared as early as 1969 as one of the major French artists of his generation, a key figure in body art alongside the Viennese actionnists (Hermann Nitsch, Rudolf Schwarzkogler), Gina Pane, Vito Acconci, Bruce Nauman and Chris Burden. Michel Journiac's art is an art of revolt, militant and subversive. Painting, action, video, photography, sculpture, mailings, scenic devices, contracts, etc., take the body as a material and question the society that conditions it. His protean work crosses the whole range of artistic practices of his time. It has been the subject of numerous solo and group exhibitions and is now preserved in the collections of the greatest museums.
Through iconic works, the Christophe Gaillard gallery retraces Michel Journiac's journey, a mental itinerary of his anguish and anxiety.
These chosen rituals, whose meaning he diverts, have, as the art critic François Pluchart points out, "played a great role in the evolution of contemporary thought".