Xavier Veilhan - 20th Century & Contemporary Art Day Sale London Thursday, June 29, 2017 | Phillips

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  • Provenance

    Private Collection (acquired directly from the artist)

  • Catalogue Essay

    In the same way, French artist Xavier Veilhan situates people and relationships at the core of his oeuvre. His exhibition at the Biennale, Studio Venezia, offers a fully functioning recording studio that invites professional musicians to collaborate, experiment and document. The studio reflects a comparable aesthetic to Deborah, an abstract geometric female nude executed in 2001. With an inherently formalist preoccupation with materiality and form, Deborah espouses a social commentary on perception, interaction and engagement in the digital age.

    Drawn into geometric abstraction, Xavier Veilhan’s Debora, 2001 depicts a futuristic and post-human female nude. Stripped of superfluous detail, her stance is powerful, her poise elegant. Conveying strength, sensuality and grace, the exquisite sculpture, cast in resin and painted emerald green, empowers the female body while evocatively mimicking the aesthetic of digitally rendered images. As such, Debora critically addresses the ways in which digital technologies and the post-Internet age have altered our perception of the world.

    The form of Veilhan’s multifaceted sculpture is reminiscent of Gerhard Richter’s Ema (Nude on a Staircase), 1966 – a painting Richter made of his beloved wife; a painting of love and adoration. In a similar vein, Veilhan turns to friends and family as subjects for his sculptures, thus achieving a deeper engagement with his sitters. Furthermore Debora is indicative of German figurative sculpture of the 1980s, namely the masterful work of Georg Baselitz and Stephan Balkenhol.

    Over his extensive career, Veilhan’s work has exhibited at the Barbican, the Centre Pomidou and Versailles. Today a testament to the calibre of his artistic production, Veilhan represents France at the Venice Biennial 2017. His fully operational recording studio, Studio Venzia, curated by Christian Marclay and Lionel Bovier continues to position people, teamwork and collaboration at the heart of Veilhan’s creative output.

130

Debora

painted Polyurethane resin
200.4 x 60 x 60 cm (78 7/8 x 23 5/8 x 23 5/8 in.)
Executed in 2011.

Estimate
£25,000 - 35,000 

Sold for £40,000

Contact Specialist
Tamila Kerimova
Specialist, Head of Day Sale
+ 44 20 7318 4065
tkerimova@phillips.com

20th Century & Contemporary Art Day Sale

London Auction 30 June 2017