- Exhibition program
- Cycle: Homo ludens. Art at play
- Artist
- Xavier Veilhan
- Dates
- —
- Curated by
- Grazia Quaroni
Born in Lyon in 1963, Xavier Veilhan lives and works in Paris. His art is a constant study of historical and contemporary systems of representation, and his pieces are the result of his analysis of verism, hyperrealism, illusionism and — on a more contemporary level — advertising techniques, reflecting a sharp, brilliant reality. His entire œuvre questions art itself.
Veilhan has worked in a wide variety of media — oil painting, sculpture, retouched photography, installations, etc. — but in all of them he concentrates on the particular relationship between the piece and the viewer. Regardless of the visual vocabulary used, he tries to make the viewer think by showing familiar images in a very different way.
In his exhibition in the Espai 13, Veilhan is presenting a highly contemporary idea of the work of art, using resources more generally connected with the mass media than with art. In his pictures, formed by a series of light bulbs, the images are created by a computer program. They are a mixture of fantasy figures, drawn from the collective imagination, and others of an almost abstract appearance such as fire, water or wind.
Xavier Veilhan is certainly one of the most interesting names on the current French art scene. He has exhibited in one-man shows in several European countries as well as in New York, and the Magasin in Grenoble has recently held a large retrospective of his work.
"Lightworks" is a co-production between the Joan Miró Foundation and the Galería Javier López in Madrid.
