On 12/6/2017, Huffington Post (
visit link) ran the following story:
"Word on the Street: French Giant Hits Avenue of the Americas
02/19/2013 07:02 pm ET Updated Dec 06, 2017
French artist Xavier Veilhan sometimes draws comparisons to Jeff Koons for his brightly colored, radically simplified sculptures — though without the kitsch and self-aggrandizement. Both deal with monumentality and both locate their imagery within a type of popular, or collective imagination. The two are also among the elite group of contemporary artists who have been invited to exhibit at the Chateau de Versailles.
Veilhan, whose work also includes painting, photography, performance and filmmaking, often experiments with technology to reveal different aspects of perception. A 3D scanner used to make sculptural portraits of friends and colleagues is a favorite tool of his investigation, and was the starting point for his new permanent installation in midtown Manhattan, at the corner of 53rd St. and Sixth Avenue.
“Jean-Marc,” the blue, steel, multi-faceted giant, commissioned by RXR Realty — whose offices occupy the block — is the portrait of fellow French artist, Jean-Marc Bustamante. Though angled and futuristic, the frozen geometries of the drapery and contrapposto stance nonetheless look part Balzac, part David — a profile that seems as timeless as it does classical in this new iteration.
CD: You just installed a new sculpture on the corner of 53rd and 6th Ave. How did you approach the site?
XV: My idea of sculpture is that it should be dynamic and beautiful—as much as it can be—and that you locate yourself with it, like the LOVE sign a few blocks up on 56th St. There are a few statues—or rather visual events—that you associate with places that are otherwise quite interchangeable in New York.
So it’s a marker. Plus it’s a link between the architecture of the city and the people passing by. It’s a human representation but as a still, oversize element it is also connected to the buildings. So that’s extremely basic. My ambition is not to make something conceptually complicated; it’s really to make more of a driving kind of sculpture. It’s fine for me that you pass by sitting in a taxi almost sleeping and that you see it. It should work this way."