Rays (London)

Xavier Vielhan

06

About the Artwork

This piece is part of Xavier Veilhan’s ongoing “Rays” Series. Designed for the Willis Plaza, this artwork frames and questions the views of the City opened up by recent construction activity. The artist has been working since 2011 on this on-going series of works formulated as a tribute to Jesús Rafael Soto and Fred Sandback. Dealing with the possibilities of representation and the question of display—two important issues in his practice—these works are immersive and optical environments that play with scale, light, shadows, and ephemeral architecture. They have been presented in numerous institutions and public spaces, including Le Corbusier’s “Cité Radieuse” in Marseille, Sheats Goldstein Residence in Los Angeles (USA), Hatfield House (UK), La Conservera in Murcia (Spain), and French architect Claude Parent’s Sainte-Bernadette-du-Banlay in Nevers (France).

Year: 2015


Copyright the artist, courtesy of Galerie Perrotin Photo: © Nick Turpin

Material

rubber, polyester, steel, stainless steel, concrete

Dimensions

1200 x 600 x 150 cm (plinth 150 x 75 cm)

Artist Biography

Xavier Vielhan

Xavier Veilhan’s sculptural interventions are bold and transfixing, while complementing existing architecture and altering how viewers look at their surroundings. His “Architectones” series pays tribute to Kasimir Malevich's “Architectons,” three-dimensional models that blend architecture with philosophy. In “Architectones,” Veilhan installed sculptures in celebrated, modernist homes; each work was unique to the setting and placed in dialogue with the building’s architecture. A sixty-foot bust of Le Corbusier was set atop the architect’s Cité Radieuse in Marseille, for example. Through faceted, distorted shapes, Veilhan’s structures capture energy by revealing the movement surrounding them. In 2009, Veilhan’s work was displayed in the Palace of Versailles and its surrounding gardens, juxtaposing traditional architecture against minimalist, futurist-inspired sculpture, with the ultimate goal of enhancing the former.