Cyprien Gaillard

Cyprien Gaillard combines sculpture, architecture, video, photography, and sound art to create complex works. His themes revolve around youth culture, urban development, the perception of nature, and approaches to life in our time. He sees himself less as an author and more as an observer of existing structures—be they postwar modernist buildings or stereotypical patterns of behavior among young people.

In the summer of 2024, the Fondation Beyeler in Basel presented Gaillard’s film Retinal Rivalry, 2024, which has also been on display at the Haus der Kunst in Munich since the fall of 2025. The film is a masterpiece: it combines stereoscopic 3D images with acoustic and visual stimuli of almost hallucinogenic intensity. The camera guides us through urban zones and scenic spaces—such as Saxon Switzerland or Munich’s Theresienwiese—places that are both culturally charged and symbolically determined. The mood remains gloomy and disturbing throughout.

For Bregenz, Gaillard deals with so-called Deterrents–measures designed to discourage people from engaging in certain behaviors. Such forms of repression and control are omnipresent in public spaces. All these strategies of deterrence erode and shrink public space. They manifest themselves in barriers, uncomfortable seating, or the targeted use of classical music at train stations or under bridges to avoid loitering. For Kunsthaus Bregenz, Cyprien Gaillard is developing a new film production alongside sculptural interventions that are tailored to the building and its architecture.

Cyprien Gaillard (b. 1980 in Paris) lives in Paris and Berlin. His work has been shown in exhibitions at institutions worldwide, including OGR Torino in 2024–2025, the Fondation Beyeler, Basel, in 2024, the Palais de Tokyo & Lafayette Anticipations, Paris, and LUMA, Arles, both in 2022, the 58th Venice Biennale in 2019, the Julia Stoschek Collection, Düsseldorf, in 2015, Sprüth Magers, Berlin, in 2015, MoMA PS1, New York, in 2013, the Kunsthalle Basel in 2010, MMK Frankfurt in 2010, the New Museum, New York, and Tate Modern, London, both in 2009. In 2010 Gaillard was the recipient of the Marcel Duchamp Prize, and in 2011 he was awarded the Nationalgalerie Prize for Young Art in Berlin.