Xavier Veilhan: Maquettes
The City as a Vision: Tribute to Michel Ragon
September 19, 2014–February 22, 2015
Opening: Thursday, September 18, 7pm
The Turbulences – Frac Centre
88 rue du Colombier
45000 Orléans
France
T +33 (0) 2 38 62 52 00
www.frac-centre.fr
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Maquettes / Xavier Veilhan
For the first time, Xavier Veilhan shows his models outside his studio or the sets of his films and performances, at The Turbulences – Frac Centre. They are neither artwork nor really models, but sheer construction exercises which stem from a research process that is free from all predetermination. As bearers of potential creations, these abstract objects can be seen as the skeletons of figurations to come.
The poorness of the materials and construction methods provide a counterpoint to the drafting process that the artist carries out on screen before the final crafting. Through their simplicity and the freedom of their implementation, these multiple versions reintroduce the question of a third dimension.
These artefacts prolong the research on modernist space and constructivist aesthetics that irrigates Xavier Veilhan’s creative work and reveal their proximity to the works from the Frac Centre’s collection.
The way the models are presented evokes the exhibition of Russian constructivist works at the third Obmokhu show in May 1921. Arranged in an original scenography, midway between a cabinet and a workshop, Xavier Veilhan’s models reveal the artist’s taste for research and experimentation.
The City as a Vision / Tribute to Michel Ragon
This exhibition proposes a journey through the urban imaginary, after World War II and today. Divided into two sections, it pays tribute to historian and critic Michel Ragon who, in his books, gave an introduction to the issues of experimental architecture—a field that lies at the heart of the Frac Centre’s collection.
During the 1960s, Michel Ragon became an advocate of a young generation of architects, engineers and artists who developed, in line with Yona Friedman’s work, a spatial urban design, capable of expanding globally and responding to the occidental dream of total mobility.
As a member of the GIAP (International Group for Prospective Architecture), M. Ragon condemned the rigid and outdated architectural patterns of the time; he matched them with a visionary and “prospective” pragmatism, conjugating constructive designs and the patenting of innovative technical solutions with the assertion of the image as a field for creation and anticipation.
At a time when the globalisation of the urban environment has become a reality, what is the validity of those “futurologists visions,” which have pervaded through drawings, collages and models?
If the stakes have evolved, the strategies and globalising systems designed then seem to have become the operational models of today; how do they infuse the way in which the 21st-century city is designed and constructed, from the micro-scale of the individual to the macro-scale of the territory?
Curators: Marie-Ange Brayer, Emmanuelle Chiapponne-Piriou, Aurélien Vernant
Communication contact: Amélie Evrard T + 33 (0) 2 38 21 79 53 / amelie.evrard [at] frac-centre.fr
