Educated between Paris and Berlin, where he had Georg Baselitz as a teacher, Xavier Veilhan of Lyon is an artist whose works and exhibitions are major events. In 2009, he was the second contemporary artist, after Jeff Koons, to be exhibited at the Château de Versailles, where he offered a reflection on the symbolic nature of the place – linked to power – and the objects represented, the movements of the artist and the visitors.

The creation of immersive experiences through works in situ, adapted to their environment, is a common thread in his career, as is working with artists from other disciplines, including musicians, such as Daft Punk and Giorgio Moroder, who he portrayed in sculptures, or Air and Sébastien Tellier, with whom he has performed.

Monumental, Xavier Veilhan’s works are easily identifiable. His faceted, brightly-coloured sculptures, abstract or representing great men or animals, adorn the streets of Bordeaux, Lyon and even London and Seoul.

To make them, the artist transforms 3D scans into assemblies of folded and cut steel sheets that echo the places which will host them. Xavier Veilhan’s work is full of many other materials and mediums: Lights, mirrors, wood, photography, painting, music.

For Studio Venezia (French Pavilion, Venice Biennale 2017), the artist immerses visitors in a recording studio where music and volumes merge to spark new sensory emotions.

Xavier Veilhan’s career was international beginning very early on. The artist was educated in Berlin in the mid-1980s and exhibited from Italy to Russia beginning in the 1990's. In 1995, he was a resident at Villa Kujoyama, where he worked in collaboration with Japanese artistic, academic and cultural circles.

After numerous exhibitions throughout Europe, Asia and the Americas, Xavier Veilhan installed his first in situ works abroad in 2013, in New York and Shanghai. Over almost 30 years, he has established himself as one of France's leading international artists, even to the point of representing France at the Venice Biennale in 2017.