Relying on the spare lightness that lends the Architectones series its plastic unity, the artist draws on a palette of generic, minimal forms that convey a symbolic and architectonic appropriation of the site, modifying the way it is perceived without contradicting its function."
"Well I wonder where you've been
I don't see you often I try to feel something for you
But that's all that I can do
Give my shadow to you" (wild nothing, shadow)
"This fall, the church of Sainte-Bernadette du Banlay in Nevers welcomes the fifth instalment of Architectones, the series of exhibitions Xavier Veilhan conceived around flagship buildings of Modernism. Following three modernist houses in California, USA (the VDL Research House, the Case Study House no 21 and the Sheats-Goldstein Residence) and the Cité Radieuse in Marseille (2013), and before upcoming scheduled projects at the Melnikov House in Moscow and Miles van der Rohe's Barcelona Pavilion, Xavier Veilhan is undertaking to occupy the 1966 Brutalist chef d'oeuvre by Claude Parent and Paul Virilio situated in the heart of France.
Yet another opportunity for the artist to pay homage to the father of the 'oblique function,' already commemorated at Versailles in the monumental installation piece Les Architectes. Claude Parent is someone Veilhan sees as a guiding light, the living embodiment of architecture as arising from the imagination, from the sketch, adamantly uncompromising and nourished by its unbroken links with artists. In Nevers, as with his prior interventions, Xavier Veilhan will present a series of previously unshown works – installations, sculptures, photomontages – that investigate the relationship between art and architecture in the specific context of the site, which is approached 'in all its dimensions' so as to best reveal the inventiveness it embodies."
Read about Xavier Veilhan's past Architectones Series at
the VDL Neutra House (here)
and Sheats Goldstein House( here)
------------------