“The Sense of Orientation” Commissariat de Xavier Veilhan – Galerie Andrehn-Schiptjenko – Paris, 75003

Andréhn-Schiptjenko presents from November 28, 2024 to January 25, 2025 the exhibition The Sense of Orientation designed by Xavier Veilhan. This curatorial request is a continuation of a series of similar invitations addressed to gallery artists such as Matts Leiderstam and Ridley Howard, as well as to external curators such as, more recently, Chloé Bonnie-More. This exhibition also testifies to a continuous dialogue between Xavier Veilhan and the gallery which has been established over more than three decades of representation. “If the title sounds like a pleonasm which doubles the idea of ​​direction, it indicates both a position (we know where we are), but also a potential path (we know where we are going). Between these two points, which can be physical or mental in turn, the exhibition presents itself as a space-time where the pieces function as landmarks whose relationship to time equals the relationship to space. The ambiguity of the expression reduced to the status of a title exhausts its meaning and allows us to return to the essence of its meaning. The works chosen for the exhibition can be linked together formally in that they reflect a relative modesty of means in the service of a metaphysical ambition. The Sense of Orientation exposes several directions that tend towards the overall idea of ​​an art used as a tool to unravel the complexity of the world. The exhibition brings together, in a sort of operant poetry, works by artists that I know personally before their work and artists whom I met through their work. It is a snapshot of my relationship with works and artists that touch me for various reasons, often of a certain proximity, which does not exclude surprises. This collective exhibition takes me back to my position as a collector but also to the work of staging and curating that I explored with Le Projet Hyperréaliste (1996-2003), Le Mur de Verre (2003) or Le Baron de Triqueti (collaboration with Alexis Bertrand, 2006). Unlike these three devices for staging works for which I proposed an architecture, The Sense of Orientation does not call for an intervention on my part. The curatorial work defines a space left to the works and is part of a global reflection on what an exhibition is” Xavier Veilhan