Xavier Veilhan - Cedar: Stockholm

Andréhn-Schiptjenko has the pleasure of announcing Xavier Veilhan’s new solo-exhibition, CEDAR, the artist’s seventh at the gallery.

A cut-up cedar tree trunk is aligned on both walls of the gallery 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 older work, always in reference to the decomposition of form, where image is a whole of multiple parts. We have seen it in pixels (Ghost Landscapes), discs (Cocardes), slices (Blind Sculptures), light bulbs (Light Machines), and in his various faceted sculptures.

When cutting a tree in a cross-sectional direction, as if slicing salami, we go against the functional logic of natural wood, rendering it more fragile. Yet the result is a distinctive reading of the tree: the trunk is systematically scanned, reminding us of a human MRI, or of the floors of a building in relation to its façade. 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. Like a waterline, he somehow erases any relation to the floor and defines a new “level zero”.

Xavier Veilhan was born 1963, lives and works in Paris, and is one of his generation’s most important artists. 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. Concerned with the scenography of a dedicated presentation, Veilhan addresses issues of perception as well as the physical and temporal relationships created within the context of the exhibition format.

Veilhan’s work is to be found in the most important public and private collections worldwide. He has made several permanent public works in numerous locations across the world – most recently The Skater in Osan, South Korea. An on-going project that has received great critical acclaim since 2012 is Architectones, artistic interventions in iconic architectural landmarks.