François Bel is a French artist born in Lyon in 1977. He is a painter, sculptor, and installation artist. Growing up amidst a lively street-art atmosphere, Bel drew inspiration from its characteristic repetitive and multifaceted nature. His love of New Realism, Dadaism, and Pop Art becomes apparent in his tendency to freeze daily items in a moment of eruption to criticize our society's unstable reliance on consumption - in the spirit of Marcel Duchamp's infamous ready-mades. Like Duchamp, Bel consistently reappropriates most of his materials, often using nylon string for his suspension works and iron strings for his sculptural works. Bel encrusts his objects in acrylic glass as if fixed in an instant of explosion. His work interrogates viewers about the concept of time: which passes, consumes, and out-survives ourselves. In a society where fast-paced efficiency is the norm, Bel freezes our vices in a single moment. His sculptures mirror a culture imprisoned and confined in economic, social, and political chains. His creations criticize humanity's long-standing self-destructive conceptions of our entitlement to a powerful society.