Cyprien Gaillard

Cyprien Gaillard

 

Cyprien Gaillard (*1980) works across a range of media including film, video, photography, collage, installation and live performance.  His extraordinary cosmos gives new form to such phenomena as civilizational upheaval and geological time. Concerned with the wreckage of modernity and the intersections between human artefacts, urban geography and psychology, the Paris and Berlin-based artist’s work embraces a poetry of entropy that rearranges history to shed new light on the present.

 

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Many of Gaillard’s works combine disparate landscapes or architectures from different times and spaces to reveal unexpected correlations. His six-part 35mm film and photo series Real Remnants of Fictive Wars (2003–08) captures slow-moving fire extinguisher emissions engulfing urban sites and monuments including Robert Smithson’s legendary Spiral Jetty (1970). Sculptural interventions have involved his excavation of a buried German military bunker on the Dutch coast to make it accessible to visitors, or threading scrapped excavator shovels with smooth, minimal rods made of such millennia-old geological materials as onyx and calcite (2013). Gaillard’s social sculpture The Recovery of Discovery (2011) encouraged Berlin museum-goers to sit on a high pyramid of boxes filled with Turkish-brewed Efes beer and demolish it in a weeks-long binge drinking session—a gesture evoking the trauma of colonization and cultural asset appropriation that echoes in many museum artifacts. Polaroid photo series including Fields of Rest (2009), Geographical Analogies (2009), and Sober City (2015) juxtapose pictures of historical and modern ruins, or superimpose shots of New York City with crystalline images of an amethyst. Gaillard’s use of the fleeting Polaroid photograph is by no means incidental, and not only because the obsolete analogue technology is a kind of relic in its own right. The medium’s environmental wastefulness amounts to a kind of “entropy accelerator” and its inferior light stability causes the photo to fade over time.

Complex video and film works including Desniansky Raion (2007), Pruitt-Igoe Falls (2009), Cities of Gold and Mirrors (2009), KOE (2015), Nightlife (2015) or Ocean II Ocean (2019) form the gravitational center of Gaillard’s oeuvre. Video footage showing the controlled demolition of modern residential and office blocks is intercut with nighttime footage of Niagara Falls. Russian hooligans brawl in front of high-rise housing projects for the “New Soviet man.” American college students swig tequila in front of brutalist, pyramidal hotels in the Mexican city of Cancún while the ritual dance of a gang from L.A. is performed in a real Mayan ruin a few meters away. Swarms of tropical ring-necked parakeets, an invasive species, fly through a Düsseldorf shopping promenade. Fireworks explode over the Nazi-built Olympiastadion in Berlin; a Cleveland oak tree planted by the legendary black Olympic champion Jesse Owens comes into view; in Los Angeles, so-called Hollywood Junipers, a tree species originally from Asia, whip and sway in a slow-motion storm. Disused New York City subway cars tossed into the sea teem with sea anemones, corals and fish, finding a counterpoint in the fossil-encrusted geological rock strata of subway station walls in Moscow.

The seductive audiovisual language of Gaillard’s films recalls the eighteenth and nineteenth-century Romantic aesthetic tradition of seeking the sublime in images of ruins, catastrophes and topographical extremes. Yet his works can also be read as socio-critical analyses of colonialism, of the failed social aspirations of modernist architecture and the fluid nature of capital in the age of tourism and gentrification. Or as a meditation on how quickly we forget that all societies will eventually perish, one civilization ineluctably yielding to another.

 

Works
Cyprien Gaillard
Cyprien Gaillard
Ocean II Ocean, 2019

Cyprien Gaillard
Ocean II Ocean, 2019
HD Video, color, sound
10:56 min

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Cyprien Gaillard
Cyprien Gaillard
Overburden, 2020

Cyprien Gaillard
Overburden, 2020
Aluminum honeycomb and limestone with stainless steel inlay
278.4 × 149.9 × 5.6 cm
109 5/8 × 59 × 2 3/16 inches

More views
Cyprien Gaillard
Cyprien Gaillard
Fiji Bar-Winged Thrasher, 2013

Cyprien Gaillard
Fiji Bar-Winged Thrasher, 2013
Excavator head and banded calcite
150 × 200 × 170 cm
59 × 78 3/4 × 67 inches

More views
Cyprien Gaillard
Cyprien Gaillard
Queen City, 2012

Cyprien Gaillard
Queen City, 2012
Beer label on original press photograph with cropping marks
17.8 × 23 cm
7 × 9 inches

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Cyprien Gaillard
Cyprien Gaillard
GATE (GATE DETROIT WATER WORKS), 2016

Cyprien Gaillard
GATE (GATE DETROIT WATER WORKS), 2016
Graphite on paper
152 × 152 cm
59 7/8 × 59 7/8 inches

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Cyprien Gaillard
Cyprien Gaillard
Nightlife, 2015

Cyprien Gaillard
Nightlife, 2015
3D motion picture, DCI DCP
14:56 min

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Cyprien Gaillard
Cyprien Gaillard
L'Ange du foyer (Vierte Fassung), 2019

Cyprien Gaillard
L'Ange du foyer (Vierte Fassung), 2019
Holographic LED-Display, stainless steel base
156 × 75 × 24 cm
61 3/8 × 29 1/2 × 9 1/2 inches

More views
Cyprien Gaillard
Cyprien Gaillard
Visitant (no dancing 2020-2021), 2021

Cyprien Gaillard
Visitant (no dancing 2020-2021), 2021
Coated nylon skin, industrial air-fans, customized industrial motor control unit, light, electronic equipment, KILLASAN Soundsystem, Soundtrack by Hieroglyphic Being
Various dimensions

Site-specific installation Berlin Atonal, 2021

Cyprien Gaillard
Cyprien Gaillard
Desniansky Raion, 2007

Cyprien Gaillard
Desniansky Raion, 2007
Video, color, sound
30:00 min

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Cyprien Gaillard
Cyprien Gaillard
Cities of Gold and Mirrors, 2009

Cyprien Gaillard
Cities of Gold and Mirrors, 2009
16 mm film, color, sound
8:52 min

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Cyprien Gaillard
Cyprien Gaillard
Overburden, 2020

Cyprien Gaillard
Overburden, 2020
Aluminum honeycomb and limestone with stainless steel inlay
304.8 × 150 × 5.7 cm
120 × 59 1/16 × 2 1/4 inches

More views
Cyprien Gaillard
Cyprien Gaillard
The Recovery of Discovery, 2011

Cyprien Gaillard
The Recovery of Discovery, 2011
Efes beer crates
Dimensions variable

More views
Details
Cyprien Gaillard

Cyprien Gaillard
Ocean II Ocean, 2019
HD Video, color, sound
10:56 min

Cyprien Gaillard
Ocean II Ocean, 2019
Cyprien Gaillard
Cyprien Gaillard

Cyprien Gaillard
Ocean II Ocean, 2019 (film still)

Cyprien Gaillard
Ocean II Ocean, 2019
Cyprien Gaillard
Cyprien Gaillard

Cyprien Gaillard
Ocean II Ocean, 2019 (film still)

Cyprien Gaillard
Ocean II Ocean, 2019
Cyprien Gaillard
Cyprien Gaillard

Cyprien Gaillard
Ocean II Ocean, 2019 (film still)

Cyprien Gaillard
Ocean II Ocean, 2019
Cyprien Gaillard

Cyprien Gaillard
Ocean II Ocean, 2019 (film still)

Cyprien Gaillard
Ocean II Ocean, 2019
Cyprien Gaillard
Cyprien Gaillard

Cyprien Gaillard
Ocean II Ocean, 2019
May you live in interesting times, installation view, 58th Venice Biennale, 2019

Cyprien Gaillard
Ocean II Ocean
Installation view: 'May you live in interesting times', 58th Venice Biennial, 2019
Cyprien Gaillard

Cyprien Gaillard
Overburden, 2020
Aluminum honeycomb and limestone with stainless steel inlay
278.4 × 149.9 × 5.6 cm
109 5/8 × 59 × 2 3/16 inches

Cyprien Gaillard
Overburden, 2020
Cyprien Gaillard
Cyprien Gaillard

Cyprien Gaillard
Overburden, 2020 (detail)

Cyprien Gaillard
Overburden, 2020
Cyprien Gaillard
Cyprien Gaillard

Cyprien Gaillard
Overburden, 2020 (detail)

Cyprien Gaillard
Overburden, 2020
Cyprien Gaillard
Cyprien Gaillard

Cyprien Gaillard
Overburden, 2020 (detail)

Cyprien Gaillard
Overburden, 2020
Cyprien Gaillard
Cyprien Gaillard

Cyprien Gaillard
Overburden, 2020 (detail)

Cyprien Gaillard
Overburden, 2020
Cyprien Gaillard
Cyprien Gaillard

Cyprien Gaillard
Overburden, 2020 (detail)

Cyprien Gaillard
Overburden, 2020
Cyprien Gaillard

Cyprien Gaillard
Fiji Bar-Winged Thrasher, 2013
Excavator head and banded calcite
150 × 200 × 170 cm
59 × 78 3/4 × 67 inches

Cyprien Gaillard
Fiji Bar-Winged Thrasher, 2013
Cyprien Gaillard
Cyprien Gaillard

Cyprien Gaillard
Fiji Bar-Winged Thrasher, 2013 (detail)

Cyprien Gaillard
Fiji Bar-Winged Thrasher, 2013
Cyprien Gaillard
Cyprien Gaillard

Cyprien Gaillard
Fiji Bar-Winged Thrasher, 2013 (detail)

Cyprien Gaillard
Fiji Bar-Winged Thrasher, 2013
Cyprien Gaillard
Cyprien Gaillard

Cyprien Gaillard
Fiji Bar-Winged Thrasher, 2013 (detail)

Cyprien Gaillard
Fiji Bar-Winged Thrasher, 2013
Cyprien Gaillard
Cyprien Gaillard

Cyprien Gaillard
Fiji Bar-Winged Thrasher, 2013 (detail)

Cyprien Gaillard
Fiji Bar-Winged Thrasher, 2013
Cyprien Gaillard
Cyprien Gaillard

Cyprien Gaillard
Fiji Bar-Winged Thrasher, 2013 (detail)

Cyprien Gaillard
Fiji Bar-Winged Thrasher, 2013
Cyprien Gaillard

Cyprien Gaillard
Queen City, 2012
Beer label on original press photograph with cropping marks
17.8 × 23 cm
7 × 9 inches

Cyprien Gaillard
Queen City, 2012
Cyprien Gaillard
Cyprien Gaillard

Cyprien Gaillard
Queen City, 2012

Cyprien Gaillard
Queen City, 2012
Cyprien Gaillard

Cyprien Gaillard
GATE (GATE DETROIT WATER WORKS), 2016
Graphite on paper
152 × 152 cm
59 7/8 × 59 7/8 inches

Cyprien Gaillard
GATE (GATE DETROIT WATER WORKS), 2016
Cyprien Gaillard
Cyprien Gaillard

Cyprien Gaillard
GATE (GATE DETROIT WATER WORKS), 2016 (detail)

Cyprien Gaillard
GATE (GATE DETROIT WATER WORKS), 2016
Cyprien Gaillard

Cyprien Gaillard
Nightlife, 2015
3D motion picture, DCI DCP
14:56 min

Cyprien Gaillard
Nightlife, 2015
Cyprien Gaillard
Cyprien Gaillard

Cyprien Gaillard
Nightlife, 2015 (film still)

Cyprien Gaillard
Nightlife, 2015
Cyprien Gaillard
Cyprien Gaillard

Cyprien Gaillard
Nightlife, 2015 (film still)

Cyprien Gaillard
Nightlife, 2015
Cyprien Gaillard
Cyprien Gaillard

Cyprien Gaillard
Nightlife, 2015 (film still)

Cyprien Gaillard
Nightlife, 2015
Cyprien Gaillard

Cyprien Gaillard
L'Ange du foyer (Vierte Fassung), 2019
Holographic LED-Display, stainless steel base
156 × 75 × 24 cm
61 3/8 × 29 1/2 × 9 1/2 inches

Cyprien Gaillard
L'Ange du foyer (Vierte Fassung), 2019
Cyprien Gaillard
Cyprien Gaillard

Cyprien Gaillard
L'Ange du foyer (Vierte Fassung), 2019 (detail)

Cyprien Gaillard
L'Ange du foyer (Vierte Fassung)
Installation view: 'May you live in interesting times', 58th Venice Biennial, 2019
Cyprien Gaillard
Cyprien Gaillard

Cyprien Gaillard
L'Ange du foyer (Vierte Fassung), 2019 (detail)

Cyprien Gaillard
L'Ange du foyer (Vierte Fassung), 2019
Cyprien Gaillard
Cyprien Gaillard

Cyprien Gaillard
L'Ange du foyer (Vierte Fassung), 2019 (detail)

Cyprien Gaillard
L'Ange du foyer (Vierte Fassung), 2019
Cyprien Gaillard
Cyprien Gaillard

Cyprien Gaillard
L'Ange du foyer (Vierte Fassung), 2019
May you live in interesting times, installation view, 58th Venice Biennale, 2019

Cyprien Gaillard
L'Ange du foyer (Vierte Fassung), 2019
Cyprien Gaillard

Cyprien Gaillard
Visitant (no dancing 2020-2021), 2021
Coated nylon skin, industrial air-fans, customized industrial motor control unit, light, electronic equipment, KILLASAN Soundsystem, Soundtrack by Hieroglyphic Being
Various dimensions

Site-specific installation Berlin Atonal, 2021

Cyprien Gaillard
Visitant (no dancing 2020-2021), 2021
Cyprien Gaillard

Cyprien Gaillard
Desniansky Raion, 2007
Video, color, sound
30:00 min

Cyprien Gaillard
Desniansky Raion, 2007
Cyprien Gaillard
Cyprien Gaillard

Cyprien Gaillard
Desniansky Raion, 2007 (film still)

Cyprien Gaillard
Desniansky Raion, 2007
Cyprien Gaillard
Cyprien Gaillard

Cyprien Gaillard
Desniansky Raion, 2007 (film still)

Cyprien Gaillard
Desniansky Raion, 2007
Cyprien Gaillard
Cyprien Gaillard

Cyprien Gaillard
Desniansky Raion, 2007 (film still)

Cyprien Gaillard
Desniansky Raion, 2007
Cyprien Gaillard

Cyprien Gaillard
Cities of Gold and Mirrors, 2009
16 mm film, color, sound
8:52 min

Cyprien Gaillard
Cities of Gold and Mirrors, 2009
Cyprien Gaillard
Cyprien Gaillard

Cyprien Gaillard
Cities of Gold and Mirrors, 2009 (film still)

Cyprien Gaillard
Cities of Gold and Mirrors, 2009
Cyprien Gaillard
Cyprien Gaillard

Cyprien Gaillard
Cities of Gold and Mirrors, 2009 (film still)

Cyprien Gaillard
Cities of Gold and Mirrors, 2009
Cyprien Gaillard
Cyprien Gaillard

Cyprien Gaillard
Cities of Gold and Mirrors, 2009 (film still)

Cyprien Gaillard
Cities of Gold and Mirrors, 2009
Cyprien Gaillard

Cyprien Gaillard
Overburden, 2020
Aluminum honeycomb and limestone with stainless steel inlay
304.8 × 150 × 5.7 cm
120 × 59 1/16 × 2 1/4 inches

Cyprien Gaillard
Overburden, 2020
Cyprien Gaillard
Cyprien Gaillard

Cyprien Gaillard
Overburden, 2020 (detail)

Cyprien Gaillard
Overburden, 2020
Cyprien Gaillard
Cyprien Gaillard

Cyprien Gaillard
Overburden, 2020 (detail)

Cyprien Gaillard
Overburden, 2020
Cyprien Gaillard
Cyprien Gaillard

Cyprien Gaillard
Overburden, 2020 (detail)

Cyprien Gaillard
Overburden, 2020
Cyprien Gaillard
Cyprien Gaillard

Cyprien Gaillard
Overburden, 2020 (detail)

Cyprien Gaillard
Overburden, 2020
Cyprien Gaillard
Cyprien Gaillard

Cyprien Gaillard
Overburden, 2020 (detail)

Cyprien Gaillard
Overburden, 2020
Cyprien Gaillard

Cyprien Gaillard
The Recovery of Discovery, 2011
Efes beer crates
Dimensions variable

Cyprien Gaillard
The Recovery of Discovery, 2011
Cyprien Gaillard
Cyprien Gaillard

Cyprien Gaillard
The Recovery of Discovery, 2011 (installation view)

Cyprien Gaillard
The Recovery of Discovery, 2011
Details
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Current and Upcoming
Cyprien Gaillard
Retinal Rivalry, 2024 (film still)
© Cyprien Gaillard

Cyprien Gaillard
Retinal Rivalry
OGR Torino, Turin
Through February 2, 2025

On the occasion of Turin Art Week, OGR Torino will inaugurate Retinal Rivalry, a solo exhibition by Cyprien Gaillard, curated by Samuele Piazza.

The show will present his new video work Retinal Rivalry (2024), which continues the artist’s interest in stereoscopic motion pictures for their sculptural, spectral and psychedelic potential, which began with Nightlife in 2015. By expanding the pictorial space and embracing the medium’s spatiality as an organizing principle for the various subjects considered, the film leaves specific narration behind to focus on pure vision. After it made its debut at the Fondation Beyeler in Basel, the work now awaits its Italian premiere.

Link
Exhibitions at Sprüth Magers
Cyprien Gaillard

Cyprien Gaillard
Reefs to Rigs
February 11–July 24, 2020
Los Angeles

Reefs to Rigs is an exhibition of new sculptures and photographs by Cyprien Gaillard, as well as his most recent film, in a presentation that connects with the Los Angeles gallery’s particular site above a future LA Metro station and across from the La Brea Tar Pits. At this intersection of urban infrastructure and prehistoric matter, Gaillard’s works emphasize the cyclical, era-spanning interactions between nature and human industry, made visible and palpable through materials encountered across the world.

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Cyprien Gaillard
Where Nature Runs Riot
May 2–July 16, 2015
Berlin

At the core of Cyprien Gaillard’s exhibition Where Nature Runs Riot is Nightlife (2015), a major new film shot at night over the past two years in Cleveland, Los Angeles and Berlin.

Nightlife begins with a shot of a rippling form that looks as if it were carved from the very light of the projection. As the camera pans to the right to reveal a pitted surface of greenish bronze, one of the most iconic sculptures of the twentieth century slowly fills the frame: Rodin’s The Thinker. This particular cast, one of the few overseen by Rodin himself, is in the forecourt of the Cleveland Museum of Art.

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Cyprien Gaillard
Cyprien Gaillard

Cyprien Gaillard, Morris Louis
From Wings to Fins
October 15–November 16, 2013
London

Monika Sprüth and Philomene Magers are delighted to announce From Wings to Fins, an exhibition of Color Field paintings by Morris Louis and new work by Cyprien Gaillard. While discussing his earliest body of work with Hans Ulrich Obrist, Gaillard remarked that his process involves going ‘deeper into the crevice of negativity or failure to rise again somehow’. Gaillard travels in search of everything from overlooked corners of the landscape to colossal ruins, sites of potent desolation that he re-imagines as haunting objects.

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Rethinking Location
Rosa Barba, Cyprien Gaillard, Andreas Hofer, David Maljkovic, Trevor Paglen, Christodoulos Panayiotou, Sterling Ruby, Paul Sietsema, Taryn Simon, Armando Andrade Tudela, Andro Wekua
May 1–June 21, 2010
Berlin

Evolving from the work of twelve conceptual artists, filmmakers and photographers presenting alternate interpretations of fictional geographies, imaginary sites and "mash-up" destinations, the exhibition Rethinking Location reconsiders the notion of location. In an era characterized by a rapidly changing perception of time and space due to ever increasing mobility, migration and globalization, our understanding of what a location is has significantly transformed.

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Cyprien Gaillard
Press
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Biography

Cyprien Gaillard (*1980, Paris) lives and works in Berlin and Paris. Selected solo exhibitions include Palais de Tokyo & Lafayette Anticipations, Paris (2022), Fondation LUMA, Arles (2022), Mori Art Museum, Tokyo (2021), TANK Shanghai (2019), Accelerator Konsthall, Stockholm (2019), Museum Tinguely, Basel (2019), K20 Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf (2016), Julia Stoschek Collection, Düsseldorf (2015), MoMA PS1, New York (2013), Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2013), Fondazione Nicola Trussardi, Milan (2012), Schinkel Pavillon, Berlin (2012), Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris (2011), KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin (2011) and Kunsthalle Basel (2010). Significant group exhibitions include Fondation Beyeler, Switzerland (2024), Fondation Carmignac, Porquerolles (2022), Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art, Helsinki (2022), Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2021), Julia Stoschek Collection, Berlin (2021), GAMeC, Bergamo (2021), Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin (2020), 58th Venice Biennale (2019), Fondation Vincent van Gogh, Arles (2019), Cleveland Triennial (2018), Gropius Bau, Berlin (2018), Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris (2018), ARoS Triennial, Aarhus (2017), The Red Brick Art Museum, Beijing (2017), Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C. (2017), Hayward Gallery, London (2016), 13th Biennale de Lyon (2015), 54th Venice Biennale (2011), Gwangju Biennal (2010) and 5th Berlin Biennale (2008).

Education
2005 L’École Cantonale d’Art de Lausanne (ECAL)
Awards, Grants and Fellowships
2016 Melbourne International Film Festival, Award for Best Experimental Short Film, Melbourne
Arken Art Prize
2011 Preis der Nationalgalerie für junge Kunst, Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin
2010 Prix Marcel Duchamp, Association pour la Diffusion Internationale de l’Art Française (ADIAF), Paris
Public Collections
ARoS Aarhus Kunstmuseum
ARKEN Museum
Collection Louis Vuitton Moet Hennessy, Paris
Centre Pompidou, Paris
CNAP, Centre National des Arts Plastiques, Paris
Colección Jumex, Mexico City
David Roberts Arts Foundation, London
FRAC Franche-Comté, Besançon
FRAC Champagne Ardenne, Reims
Fondation Pinault
GAM, Galeria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna, Turin
Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum für Gegenwart, Berlin
Hammer Museum, Los Angeles
Julia Stoschek Collection, Dusseldorf
Lafayette Anticipation – Fond de la Famille Moulin, Paris
Museum für Moderne Kunst MMK, Frankfurt
Museum Bojmans van Beuningen, Rotterdam
Musée d’Art Contemporain de Montréal
Museum of Modern Art, New York
National Museum of Korea, Seoul
National Museum, Osaka
Regione Piemonte, Turin
The Israel Museum, Jerusalem