Spotlight on Intersections@5: Xavier Veilhan

The Phillips celebrates the fifth anniversary of its Intersections contemporary art series with Intersections@5, an exhibition comprising work by 20 of the participating artists. In this blog series, each artist writes about his or her work on view.

Veilhan_Sitting Nude

Xavier Veilhan, Sitting Nude, 2000. Jet print mounted on aluminum, 63 x 47 1/4 in. Gift of the artist, 2013

Sitting Nude is a self-portrait in a somewhat melancholic, dark lighting. The pose recalls a classical archetypal representation of the sitting nude, like Rodin’s The Thinker. It is part of a series of portraits of individuals and couples. Some are dancing, others are fighting. Some are just resting and contemplating, like this piece. It is something I have continued to explore with other nudes, like the ones presented in my show Music at Galerie Perrotin in Paris (March 2015). More than anything else, the focus lies on the silhouette. I believe that the psychology of the human representation in art also comes from the way the figure is standing or the way the body is installed in a certain position, and not only from the face, as is the case in the more traditional psychological portraiture. This doesn’t, however, mean I don’t look for expression. Although Sitting Nude is related to a generic idea of the human body, it also refers to something specific; in this case, myself. The melancholy of the image is more related to an assumed and manifested ethic for beauty.

Xavier Veilhan

Spotlight on Intersections@5: Jae Ko

The Phillips celebrates the fifth anniversary of its Intersections contemporary art series with Intersections@5, an exhibition comprising work by 20 of the participating artists. In this blog series, each artist writes about his or her work on view.

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Installation view of the Intersections@5 exhibition, with Jae Ko’s Black #22, 2014; Black #23, 2014; Black #24, 2014 at right. Photo: Lee Stalsworth

I wanted to make a reduction in scale from my large paperwork, and as we all know when we reduce the scale of large objects, detail is increased. What I’ve done here is a very large reduction resulting in a very large introduction of hyper detail. The vinyl has allowed me to introduce this hyper detail by its flexibility; I am able to form, bend, and cut it to achieve a state of detail that is unattainable at a large scale. In addition to the change in detail there is an obvious change in form, from biomorphic to rigidly geometric…I enjoy playing with these disparities.

Jae Ko

Spotlight on Intersections@5: Linn Meyers

The Phillips celebrates the fifth anniversary of its Intersections contemporary art series with Intersections@5, an exhibition comprising work by 20 of the participating artists. In this blog series, each artist writes about his or her work on view.

Myers_untitled

Linn Meyers, Untitled, 2014. Gift of Lucinda and Carlos Garcia

The unmediated directness of making a drawing is the result of a line being an extension of the hand and the body. The line is universal.

At the Time Being was a site-specific wall drawing made in response to Van Gogh’s The Road Menders. I chose Van Gogh’s work as a starting point because the method that the artist used to apply paint to his canvases shares some of the same qualities of a drawing.

Twenty-five years ago, I began my career as a painter. Over time I became enamored with the distilled qualities of drawing, and eventually drawing became my primary focus.

While working on the Intersections project in 2010, however, I found that I was not only drawing on the wall, but also using a paintbrush to enhance the image. That return to painting as a mode of expression during the project at the Phillips has stuck with me, and Untitled, 2014 is evidence of that. The piece blends drawing and painting; it puts the two modes of expression on equal footing. The lines in Untitled, 2014 have a calligraphic quality that was achieved with a paintbrush; however, the act of making a line is, in and of itself, an act of drawing.

Linn Meyers