"Cellar Door" is a series of projects (installations, opera, book, etc.) which draws on Loris Gréaud's interweaving interests in art, architecture, and music. One could say that Gréaud's practice is characterized by a desire to fuse different fields of knowledge and activity, in a manner which is both futuristic and utopian. His modus operandi is in fact comparable to that of cinematic production (involving collaboration and co-authorship), and he often works with experts from diverse disciplines (including architects and scientists). Gréaud's work is orientated to ideas and processes rather than finished form, and his projects are liable to manifest themselves in different ways over time, and to move between rumour and fact.
"Cellar Door" is an ambitious artistic experiment that has a range of manifestations. One was Gréaud's exhibition at the Palais de Tokyo; a second was an installation at the ICA in London; a third is an opera staged at the Paris Opera; and a fourth is a studio space that Gréaud is building for himself on the outskirts of Paris. The notion of an artist's studio is fundamental to "Cellar Door:" operating as a symbol of imagination and potential, and as the starting point of a perpetual cycle of activity.
This book documents the project in its entirety, and is accompanied by an extensive essay by Pascal Rousseau.
Loris Gréaud is a cross-disciplinary artist, an enthusiast of architecture and quantum mechanics, a graduate with a degree in graphic arts, a former student of the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-arts de Cergy, the founder of a studio for experimental film, a producer at an electronic music label, and director of his own business. Not surprisingly, Gréaud has blazed a career path that is in keeping with his art practice. Borrowing from the working procedures of a film director or orchestra conductor, he builds empirical machines in which the medium systematically follows the ideas, which are themselves exchanged, shared, negotiated and distorted. In 2004, with the architects Marc Dölger and Damien Ziakovic, he created DGZ Research, a multidisciplinary production studio that makes the realization of “utopian” projects possible. DGZ Research is in charge of the design, architecture and project management of the Cellar Door exhibition.
Loris Gréaud has shown in Hong-Kong, Tokyo, London, Berlin, Milan, Los Angeles, New York and Paris (notably at Le Plateau, the Palais de Tokyo and the Centre Pompidou). He was awarded the Ricard Prize in 2005.
