A documentary on Xavier Veilhan: 256 days of the life of a contemporary artist
in his environment — emotional, relational, and professional.
The director Jordan Feldman followed the French
artist Xavier Veilhan for 256 days, on an almost
daily basis.
Shot from a deliberately lighthearted point of view
this documentary, in which the camera is eventually
forgotten, shows the life of a contemporary artist
in his environment — emotional, relational, and
professional.
From projects' utopic beginnings to their realization
determined by economic realities and institutional
techniques, we follow Xavier Veilhan to the heart
of the contemporary art world, from his studio to
the gallery and the museum, in the company of all
the protagonists who make up this milieu.
In 90 minutes his journey takes us from Lyon to
Bordeaux, where the artist is making public sculptures,
and then to Paris for the preparations for the
opening of his exhibition at the Centre Georges
Pompidou.
Through his portraits and landscapes, his bestiary and his architectures, Xavier Veilhan (born 1963 in Lyon, lives and works in Paris) pursues a constantly regenerated reflection on the status of representation and the materialization of an idea, using the same space for sculpture, painting and photography. A manufacturer of the visible, he invents works, images, and objects that hesitate between the familiar and the strange. Interested in modernity and using references ranging from classical statuary to Futurism and Op art, Veilhan has been compared to artists such as Damien Hirst and Jeff Koons. For Jean-Pierre Criqui he is "a perfect example of a Pop artist for the 21st century, with an accessible formal vocabulary and referents, while at the same time cultivating a certain air of detachment and reserve in his use of affects, thereby distancing himself from the empathy aroused by direct borrowings from the sphere of commodities and the media."
