Making entropy of both the human-made and the natural his central concern, Cyprien Gaillard performs a pointed critique of the idea of progress through his videos, sculptures, photography, collages and public art. A nomadic observer, Gaillard treks through urban environments as well as natural landscapes, looking for signs of deep time embedded in his surroundings. He brings fragments of the outside world inside, forming anachronistic juxtapositions, combining images of destruction and reconstruction, renewal and degradation. Gaillard’s practice is a visual archaeology of decay, whether it is the erosion of physical forms or of social and historical meaning. Often collapsing time in his work, Gaillard fights the romanticism of ruins, suggesting a disinterested gaze through which the remnants of events and places can be understood through a unified framework of cyclical time.
