Prix Marcel Duchamp 2010: Cyprien Gaillard

Cyprien Gaillard endlessly travels the world in search of ruins ancient and modern, buildings and landscapes on the point of transformation or disappearance, of being invaded or destroyed by nature, objects abandoned to themselves, sometimes ruins restored. The artist photographs or films them, recycling them by making them part of his installations and performances. He is in his own words an “outdoor artist,” but also an archaeologist and archivist. He had adopted as his own an idea of Diderot’s: “A palace must be reduced to ruins to make it an object of interest.” If one is to observe and to think, to truly see, one has to strip buildings bare, free oneself of the architectural vision. There is however neither romanticism nor nostalgia in this work full of ruins. The artist – born in 1980 and winner of the Prix Marcel Duchamp 2010 – thus unsettles our perceptions of spaces, whether ordinary or extraordinary, everyday or exotic, near or far. He leads us to see something else, beyond the limits of convention.

Prix Marcel Duchamp 2010
Cyprien Gaillard
Kurator : Jean-Pierre Bordaz