The Paris-based artist Xavier Veilhan says that his presentation in the French pavilion at the 57th Venice Biennale (13 May-26 November) will take the form “of a beautiful recording studio that harks back to the 1970s. But parts of it will look like it’s been crushed in an earthquake.” Entitled Studio Venezia, Veilhan says: “It will be a functional recording studio that invites musicians to come and work on new music material.”
The curators of the French pavilion are the high-profile Swiss-American artist Christian Marclay and the Swiss-born art critic Lionel Bovier, who is also the director of Mamco (Musée d’art Moderne et Contemporain) in Geneva. Veilhan, who is known for his Architectones installations sited in famous Modernist buildings and a gargantuan sky-blue, steel sculpture of Le Corbusier (2013), plans to tour the Venice project to other cities around the world (venues are to be confirmed).
Attracting visitors who may not usually attend art exhibitions is key, he adds. “I want to open up the pavilion to a wider audience by investing in the field of music. I want people to be taken by surprise by these moments of raw creation. I want to play with their expectations,” the artist says.