A cut-up cedar tree trunk is aligned on both walls of a space with geometrical and somehow chronological precision. Uninterrupted, the concentric timeline of the tree is transposed horizontally like an ancient neumatic music notation. This installation is conceptually strongly linked to much of Xavier Veilhan’s other work, always in reference to the decomposition of form, where image is a whole of multiple parts.
When cutting a tree in a cross-sectional direction we go against the functional logic of natural wood, rendering it more fragile. This transversal approach generates a whole different relationship to the object and dissects it into an evolutive pallet. We are seeing time.

But it is not time that is Veilhan’s primary concern, it is distance. Keeping in mind the scientific discovery of relativity, the in-dissociable character of time and space, it is instead time and object that are intrinsic here: the object has grown and unfolds in an equivalent linear form. On this unperturbedly horizontal line Veilhan explores the relationship between time and distance.

Xavier Veilhan was born 1963, lives and works in Paris. His work is multi- faceted; encompassing sculpture, installation, painting, photography as well as hybrids of all of these, and he is also engaged in performance work and filmmaking. He plays with the notions of the generic, of the industrially produced object and of universal representation, creating objects at once ambivalent and stark. Veilhan’s work is to be found in a wide range of important public and private collections worldwide. He has made several permanent public works in numerous locations across the world – most recently The Vårberg Giants in Stockholm, Sweden.