Canal + Xavier Veilhan — L’expo des 30 ans — Palais de Tokyo — Exhibition — Slash Paris

Past: November 5 → 28, 2014

Because he was part of the generation for whom the emergence of CANAL+ was a major cultural event, the television channel has asked Xavier Veilhan to turn his artistic vision to the celebration of its 30th anniversary. For this occasion, the artist has imagined a work composed of an immense mural and a stage space at the Palais de Tokyo. An allegorical vision of the television channel, the mural mixes portraits, images from the channel’s programs, and images from behind the scenes to create a reflection on technique and that which remains off camera. Taking inspiration from Eugène Delacroix’s history painting and Diego Rivera’s murals, Veilhan’s piece plays with art history as it gives an external perspective on CANAL+. Its imposing format underscores the epic dimension of the channel’s unique human and televisual adventure. CANAL+ appears in the work as a “creator of images,” with its stream of images irrigating contemporary visual culture.

Xavier Veilhan acts as a video editor in order to draw on this well of iconography and thereby find the elements necessary to compose his motif. In front of this monument, he installs a wide wooden stage made of bleacher seats and podiums. This stage hosts a lively program devised by CANAL+, featuring encounters, discussions, projections, and happenings, and the public space offers a privileged view of the mural.

The simplicity of the stage’s forms and the raw materials used in its construction are reminiscent of the behind the scenes of television sets while also recalling the minimalist aesthetic of architectural modernism. A major figure on the international art scene, Xavier Veilhan lives and works in Paris. Since the late 1980s, he has developed a multiform body of work that oscillates between classicism and high technology as it spans sculpture, painting, performance, video, and photography. Describing art as “a tool for vision through which we must look in order to understand our past, present, and future,” he questions our perception of reality by exploring modes of representation. His work has recently been exhibited in Paris, New York, Washington, Seoul, Barcelona, and Tokyo.