Cyprien Gaillard

Cyprien Gaillard was born in Paris in 1980 and lives and works in Berlin. After spending his childhood in the United States, Cyprien Gaillard studied at the Ecole Cantonale des Arts in Lausanne. Winner of the Marcel Duchamp Prize in 2010, he is currently one of the most prominent young French artists. Reinterpreting Land Art by filming fire extinguishers pouring dry ice in rural landscapes, or recording destruction processes, his work compresses time and can be understood as an archaeology of the future in which the present is projected towards its entropy. His work, which reflects a trend described by the artist himself as “vandalism", takes the form of sculptures, videos, engravings, photographs and interventions in public spaces. It brings out contemporary socio-political realities and the innate beauty of their brutality.

 Recent solo exhibitions include “Reefs to Rigs,” Sprüth Magers Los Angeles, USA (2020); “Ocean II Ocean”, Tank Museum, Shanghai, China (2019); “Overburden”, Accelerator Konsthall, Stockholm, Sweden (2019); “Roots Canal”, Museum Tinguely, Basel, Switzerland (2019).