SwissArtGallery · Documented identity

Cyprien Gaillard

Born : 1980Documented citizenships : France

French artist Cyprien Gaillard, born in Paris in 1980, works across photography, sculpture, video and performance. His work engages with the paradoxes of contemporary societies and the destruction of what they have built; architecture often appears at the moment of its collapse or in a state of ruin. After spending his childhood in California, he returned to live in Paris during adolescence. Robert Smithson is among his principal points of reference.

In the series Real Remnants of Fictive Wars (2003–2008), artificial clouds produced by fire extinguishers are staged in natural settings in the form of photographs and videos. The displacement of familiar elements continues in the works on paper: the five prints in Believe in the Age of Disbelief (2005) bring a residential tower into the middle of a seventeenth-century Dutch landscape, while The New Picturesque (2007) covers the narrative elements of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century landscapes with white paint. Geographical Analogies (2006–2013) brings together 900 Polaroids taken in different locations, arranged in groups of nine and presented in a display case. The work takes the form of an archaeology of the present, in which the images are exhibited as relics. For Dunepark (2009), Gaillard has a Second World War bunker excavated, rediscovered during urban redevelopment in the Netherlands. The site, intended for new housing, is cleared using earthmoving machinery. The approximately six-minute video Pruitt-Igoe Falls (2009) juxtaposes two static shots: the night-time demolition of a building in Glasgow’s Sighthill district and the illumination of Niagara Falls at dusk. In 2015, as part of a public commission for the Chalcography of the Louvre, he made the etching Underground Resistance, Underground Renewal.

In Sober City (2015), Polaroids of New York are altered through double exposure. That same year, Nightlife takes the form of a 3D projection with sound, lasting 14 minutes and 56 seconds. His presentations include Sedimented Landscapes at MUSAC in León in 2009; an exhibition bringing together the artist and Mario Garcia Torres at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington in 2010; and UR at Espace 315, Centre Pompidou, in Paris in 2011–2012. In 2019, the Museum Tinguely in Basel presents Roots Canal; a series of excavator buckets is shown there for the first time in Europe. That same year, at the Venice Biennale, Gaillard presents two installations: Ocean II Ocean and L’Ange du foyer (Vierte Fassung).

This profile brings together identity references for Cyprien Gaillard and paintings, drawings and works on paper documented in auction catalogues.

Documented auction references

6auction references

2auction houses

2documented results with prices

Genève Enchères · Piguet

References include catalogue entries and available results; they do not all represent completed sales. Attributed works and special lots are excluded from the priced results.

Works recorded at auction

Photograph : Piguet · Enlarge image ↗

Piguet

Untitled (from Liszt - Chopin 27 août 2008 to Liszt - Chopin 29 août 2008),

Ink on paper

Original catalogue wording

Untitled (from Liszt - Chopin 27 août 2008 to Liszt - Chopin 29 août 2008),
encre sur papier

Catalogue period : 2024-11-28 — 2024-12-11

Catalogue reference — sale not confirmed

Estimate : CHF 1000–1500

View the lot at the auction house ↗

Photograph : Genève Enchères · Enlarge image ↗

Genève Enchères · Lot 84

North West Lake (Kiev)

Watercolour

Original catalogue wording

North West Lake (Kiev)
aquarelle

Catalogue period : 2021-04-27

Published result : 2000 CHF

Fees not specified in the available data

Estimate : CHF 2000–3000

View the lot at the auction house ↗

Photograph : Genève Enchères · Enlarge image ↗

Genève Enchères · Lot 88

North East Lake (Kiev)

Watercolour

Original catalogue wording

North East Lake (Kiev)
aquarelle

Catalogue period : 2021-04-27

Published result : 1900 CHF

Fees not specified in the available data

Estimate : CHF 2000–3000

View the lot at the auction house ↗

Photograph : Genève Enchères · Enlarge image ↗

Genève Enchères · Lot 85