Press release at the NAD NY

Press release, National Academy of Design, New York

Conceived in 1996, The Photorealist Project was created for the first time in 2003 for the Biennale of Contemporary Art in Lyon, France. Reconfigured by the artist for the galleries of the National Academy Museum, this installation incorporates five photorealist paintings by Robert Bechtle, NA, Robert Cottingham, NA, Richard Estes, NA, Ralph Goings, and Richard McLean, within a free-standing structure that shows first, from the outside, the back of one of the paintings. Inside the structure, the paintings, fitted into the wall without frames, are dematerialized and appear like light projections. By emphasizing the contrast between the materiality of art and the illusion it projects The Photorealist Project exposes the artifice of art.
 
Xavier Veilhan was born in 1963 in Lyon, France, and lives and works in Paris. He achieved popularity in Europe in the early 1990s for his paintings, sculptures, installations, photographs, and videos that typically deal with issues of perception in art. His most recent installation, Vanishing Point, which explores the concept of perspective, is on display this fall in a solo exhibition at the Centre Pompidou in Paris.

This exhibition is made possible by the generous support of the Peter Jay Sharp Foundation, Karen Bechtel, Agnes Gund and Daniel Shapiro, Diana Beattie, The Cultural Services of The French Embassy, The J. Steven Manolis and Michelle K. Manolis Foundation, Inc., and Lynn and Sy Syms.