CYPRIEN GAILLARD

Moving between photography, film and installation, Gaillard embarks upon a search for artefacts, monuments and architectural landmarks, as well as natural and urban landscapes that feature historical or modern ruins in states of neglect or reconstruction. This process allows the artist to investigate the effects and origins of social change. Entropy is an important theme for Gaillard: his works allude to the forms and techniques of Land art and Process art. The subcultures and youth movements that pervade public spaces also influence the artist. Gaillard transfers cultural materials and symbols into other contexts, rearranging images and ideas to critically examine the history of colonialism, thus inscribing his work with an enormous variety of cultural forms and symbols drawn from sources worldwide. The artist then engages these to examine the forces driving destruction and decay, as he observes and marks a continual disappearance of different cultures.