Catalogue of the exhibitions
Light Machines at Fondation
Vasarely, Aix-en-Provence, France (March 1st - June 17th, 2004) and at Écuries de Saint-Hugues, Cluny, France (July 10th - September 26th, 2004): a thousand electric light-bulbs arranged in a grid on a flat aluminium support form the analoge frame that produces low-resolution video images.
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."
