Press Release
With his films, photographs, and sculptures, Cyprien Gaillard (born 1980 in Paris) describes and evokes the perpetual destruction, preservation, and reconstruction of urban spaces. The exhibition Cyprien Gaillard. Roots Canal puts on display from 16 February to 5 May 2019 works capturing the incessant transformation of the urban landscape, as well as that of nature and humankind. Close to tipping point, his works evoke the imminence, or the coming, of a metamorphosis landscape, as well as that of nature and humankind. Close to tipping point, his works evoke the imminence, or the coming, of a metamorphosis.
© ArtCatalyse International / Marika Prévosto 2019. All Rights Reserved
Installed at the heart of Museum Tinguely and presented for the first time in Europe, a series of excavator heads precisely embodies this moment of suspension. A metaphor for human voracity, in the museum context these tools commonly found on building sites become fossils from the future.
This train of thought is pursued and extended by Sober City (2015), a series of pictures on show in the same room: as a visual counterpoint to the excavator shovels, Polaroid photographs hang on the walls at irregular intervals, in their familiar modest size, forming an urban backdrop. The photographs are double-
KOE (2015) follows a large-
The winged visitors, ring-
Nightlife (2015) invites visitors to immerse themselves in a hypnotic, trance-
As in the other works in the exhibition, Gaillard creates a new narrative out of disparate, even contrary fragments. In this new narrative, anecdotes mix with history, while city, nature and people coexist in a shared non-
Exhibition February 16 -
1] Cyprien Gaillard, Captain Blood痴 Moorhen, 2013. [2] KOE (still), 2015. Film. [3] Sober City (Jackie Robinson & Pee Wee Reese), 2015 (detail). [4, 5] Nightlife (still), 2015. Film. ゥ Cyprien Gaillard. Courtesy the artist, Spr・h Magers and Gladstone Gallery.