Since the early 2010s, Michael Van den Abeele has developed a practice of art and writing that dwells on the trajectory of images and objects across various eras, social environments, and media. Jeans (a utilitarian fabric that became work clothing and over the generations, a fashion uniform), dinosaurs (which have never disappeared from popular culture), and mummies (aristocratic figures and now protagonists of Hollywood movies) have all served as the starting point for the artist’s work. He has reproduced these motifs and shifted them yet further, from one medium to another.

Ouija, his first monographic exhibition at a French institution, takes its title from a series made in 2026. The works depict the back of a torso tattooed with a Ouija board, the device whose combinations of letters and numbers has allegedly enabled mediums to contact people in the afterlife. The silent body thus becomes a medium for the utterances of spirits, a vehicle of subsurface meaning. As a whole, the exhibition—which consists of several series of sculptures and drawings, in addition to two videos—explores this relationship between subject and object, where words escape the body and bring things to life. With a certain ventriloquism and borrowings from the worlds of cabaret and musicals, a drama of daily life emerges: pasta invites itself for dinner in the place of actual guests, an iron discovers its own reflection in a mirror, and miniature (vertically arranged) beds assume the position of abstract paintings. This “dramedy” touches upon the themes of consumption and digestion, class habits, and the narratives and fantasies that run through us, individually and collectively. Between objects caught up in an introspective quest and bodies that have surrendered themselves fully, with whom should we identify?

On the occasion of this exhibition, CRAC Alsace is publishing, in collaboration with After 8 Books, Learning to count, a collection of short stories, prose poems, and songs written by Michael Van den Abeele between 2018 and early 2026.

Curator: Elsa Vettier

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Ouija by Michael Van den Abeele will be held alongside Can We Act As If Nothing Happened? by Fabienne Audéoud. 
On Thursday, October 8, 2026, from 6 pm, CRAC Alsace is pleased to invite you to the opening of these two solo exhibitions. On this occasion, a free shuttle will leave from Basel (Meret Oppenheim Strasse) at 6 pm. It will return to Basel at 10 pm. Information and RSVP: s.menu@cracalsace.com