XAVIER VEILHAN

КСАВЬЕ ВЕЙЛХАН

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source: veilhan

Whether he uses digital photography, sculpture, public statuary, video, installations or even the art of the exhibition, Xavier Veilhan builds his work around the same axis: the possibilities of representation. One of the most striking features of his polymorphic practice is that he treats generic objects and shapes of everyday life so that they come out smoothed, without details, and resistant to any psychological insight. Since the 1990s, bestiaries occupy a significant place in this process, and among them, penguins and rhinoceros of unnatural colours, made of painted polyester resin. The Rhinoceros (1999), made to scale, was lacquered in Ferrari red, in a way that instantly modifies the perception of the mastodon’s “body work”. In 2008, he built a to scale replica of a gleaming metal shark that was given a generic title, Shark. We often compare animals to finely tuned machines. This notion is visible in all of Xavier Veilhan’s sculptures of animals, the search of achieving perfection. Already in 1995, with The Republican Guard, he had produced a completely generic set of four mounted guards. The statues stood like real size toy figures. Veilhan’s anthropomorphic figures are archetypes reduced to the essential, prepared so as to allow the viewer to immediately project himself beyond the anecdotal. Without seeking to be a perfect copy, they manage to impose their intimidating authority over the viewer. More recently they have been given names, but there is nothing to indicate portrait as such. Even when he assembled his personal pantheon of 20th century builders, he named his monochrome sculptures, The Architects.

Fascinated by the issues of modernity and technical progress, Veilhan was also interested in mechanical systems and in the way these are constructed. With The Model T Ford (1997-1999), he even went against “Fordism” by conducting the handmade reconstruction of this 1910 car, a symbol of the first mass productions. From stereotype to prototype, the artist has clouded the issue and covered his tracks by playing with the standards : bicycles, a motor scooter, and more recently, a Swiss cuckoo clock. This huge sixteen feet long mechanical work of art, equipped with coloured lacquered wheels, measures an enigmatic amount of time when a metallic sphere is activated in its system. The taste for and the art of invention, a fascination for aerodynamic properties and the history of kinetic art from Futurism until the 1960s, perpetrate his sculptures and installations from the carriage distorted by speed to the great monochrome mobiles with expertly regulated slowness. Le Balancier (2007) devotes these principals precisely to a demand to mark time, to enrol the timeless gestures implemented by the artist performing a relentless count, a revolution. The presence of clocks, hourglasses and other lithophanies have introduced the latter this particular dimension of a countdown whose outcome remains hypothetical and yet inevitable. Thus, like with bestiary, modernity and progress mirrored in mechanical inventiveness has penetrated Xavier Veilhan’s career (which started at the end of the 1980s), and is still present in his most recent exhibitions.

With The Forest or The Cave (made in 1998), Xavier Veilhan proposed visiting experiences that take place in huge environments. The framework is always visible so as not to create false illusions: in Veilhan’s art, construction is essential. Rolls of grey felt that function as trunks, suggest a forest. The same material covers the ground. The sensitive experience of this synthetic environment is plunged into a muffled atmosphere, confined and soundproofed by the material used, as it dissects the automatisms of identification by resorting to strong cultural symbols. Veilhan employs these devices both in his major works and in isolated objects. And nothing pleases him more in recent years than to push these principals to the performance and show side whose economy he works on like a visual form. It is as much an opportunity to work with musicians and dancers, to use a new function of time and duration, as to confront forms with manipulation and movement, again and still present, like a safeguard, an absolute value.

“Transforming signs into instruments”: he likes to confess his passion by sublimating it into statues and exhibitions. In fact, after his major installations at the end of the nineties, not only did he had a go at making a scenography of his own works of art (Le Plein Emploi, Strasbourg 2005), but also of works by other artists (The Photorealist Project, for the Lyon Biennale in 2003, or the sculptural Baron de Triqueti, in 2006). The possibilities offered by the art of the exhibition, from the visual ideology which governs the Versailles gardens, through the techniques employed in constructivist propaganda, to the systems and political issues of the great Universal Exhibitions, constitute a series of fruitful analytical issues for an artist who’s interested in the orchestration of power and its iconographic materialization. Following this logic, Xavier Veilhan has answered to a number of public commissions in France, creating a grey monster in Tours (2004), a blue lion in Bordeaux (2004), and a bear, penguins and other characters in Lyon (2006). The archetype becomes here a catalyst that gives way to a reflection on the commemorative dimension of public statuary and on its action as a sign in our urban everyday life.
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source: blogartinternnet

夏威尔威汉 1963年出生法国艺术家工作和生活在巴黎。

“现代特色的舞台仍旧还残留些什么”这句话可以作为夏威尔冗长的作品的副标题，他在20年的创作可以理解为“奢华的机械构件”，这是20世纪乌托邦形式的一个总结，所有这些均掩盖在今天的美好和惬意下面，这难道是数码时代的未来主义吗？

关于未来的思考从考尔德起很多动力雕塑家围绕于这个问题进行创作，而夏威尔的作品展现一种悄然的精彩，用电脑建模出令人生畏的形式，在一个3d的图像世界里使这些形象失去了原本的轮廓，于是它们介于存在与虚无之间，却从没试图骗取他人的注视，只持重于自身的表演；又好像突然具有活力，平滑的表面在光泽和阴影的交错中幻象出动感，同时又像某种可操纵的工具。他的作品像精致的珠宝一样引人入胜，将这些极端的技术工艺放置在场景里，连贯的形式隐喻出视觉的时间感。

夏威尔与其他动力雕塑家不同的是，他愿意承担一个古典艺术家的责任，而古典雕塑家却只在视觉功效里试图寻找，他们始终致力于与图像的时间性无关的冲击力。

夏威尔不担心被定义成社会艺术家，非内向的，或者是一个喜欢搬运材料的表相塑造者。“艺术家的行动，在我感兴趣的选择里面有一个直接性，就像你去做运动，第一反应去实现的那件事。直觉判断是将一些逻辑的思考快速的搅拌在一起，而我却喜欢将所有事情搅拌在一起的过程。”

这些作品的目的是试图再利用不同的物质，剥除掉对他们的意思形态，使其再活化那些已废的形式：没有讽刺，但是却有嘲笑。当我们直面于这些作品时会有一些空无的感觉，这是夏威尔透过他的作品表层，透明出来的当代虚无。
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source: theinspirationgrid

Xavier Veilhan is a French artist living in Paris. His work includes photography, sculpture, film, painting and installation art.

These geometric sculptures that resemble low polygon 3D renderings are among my favorite pieces.
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source: dnauz

Французский художник Ксавье Вейан (Xavier Veilhan) родился в 1963 году. Живет и работает в Париже. Ксавье — настоящий «многостаночник» в мире искусства: он и фотограф, и художник, и скульптор, и видео перформансер, и создатель public art объектов. Но настоящую известность ему принесла серия скульптур, созданных в стиле неокубизма — угловатые, геометрическиобразные, эти скульптуры украшают многие частные коллекции и галереи. Также они нередко становятся частью разнообразных инсталляций, которые Ксавье создает по всему миру.
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source: nambrenaurbanoblogspot

Muy buena colección del artista y escultor francés Xavier Veilhan que nos presenta una serie de escultura de personas pero con marcado tinte de cubismo.

Nos presenta unas figuras que a primera vista, parecen hechas de papel o con vecotres digitales. Si bien, las esculturas con color solo tienen “un” color, al jugarse las sombras y reflejos de las luces al fotografiarlo, nos presenta una gran gama de matices de esos colores haciendo de estos, los juegos que le dan volumen.

Otra sensación que me producen sus obras es el de hacerlo parecer una imagen en 2D, prácticamente lo contrario de lo que usualmente se trata de lograr con las pinturas, que tengan esa tridimensionalidad. Pareciera que nuestro artista nos juega una broma al presentarnos estas magníficas obras, pero tan simple que pasa desapercibido su corporeidad y volúmen.
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source: deco-designfr-bb

Né en 1963 à Lyon, vit et travaille à Paris.
Les sujets des photos, des sculptures et des installations de Xavier Veilhan sont des évocations directes d’objets ou des signes de la vie quotidienne rassemblées en un monde encyclopédique d’images où pourtant rien n’est traité ni dans sa matérialité ni dans ses couleurs habituelles.
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source: jocundist

Absolutely love the stunning sculptures of French sculptor, Xavier Veilhan. His work suggest some form of Cubism to me.