Bruno Aveillan

Contemporary visual artist Bruno Aveillan dedicates his activity to several areas of expression, marking them with an exceptional visual stamp. According to French editor and gallerist Léo Scheer « Bruno Aveillan is a multimedia artist whose approach reveals a permanent quest for a diversification of medium ».

The work of this internationally acclaimed film director, photographer and artist is well-known throughout the world. In 2009, the Museum of Decorative Arts at the Louvre held a retrospective of his work. In 2014, the Museum of Contemporary Art (MoCA) of San Diego held a global exhibition entitled « Bruno Aveillan, retrospective of a world master ». His works have been also shown at The MoMA New York, The Grand Palais Paris, The Contemporary Art Center Walter Benjamin, The Museum of the Fashion Institute NY, The Great Manege Moscow, The Toulouse National Theater, The Rigaud Museum, The National Art Center Enghein, The Multimedia Art Museum Moscow (Curator Olga Sveblova), The Pavillon Noir Aix en Provence, Epicentro Art Berlin (Curator , The Couvent des Minimes Perpignan, The Museum of Decorative Arts Paris, Loop Barcelona, The Lincoln Center New York, The Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs, The Napoli Independent Film Show, The Contemporary Art Museum Cognac, The Pompidou Center Paris, among others.

Bruno Aveillan recieved more than 180 awards and nominations during his carrier, notably an Outstanding Crystal Merit Award in Crans Montana in 2012, a "Lifetime Achievement" Award for Global Excellence at LJ Fashion Film Festival in 2014 and a "Visionnary Artist" Award at Film Festival Milano 2015.

Bruno Aveillan has developed a personal artistic path that includes photography, experimental films and installations. The major reoccuring themes throughout his work centres around the human condition, wanderings and memory.

In an essay entitled "The indomitable grace of light" the art critic Zoe Balthus underlines Bruno Aveillan’s ‘proven talent, his vivid and powerful imagination’ with which he explores territories where he is free to let his hypersensitive eye tame the slightest movement of matter, intrude into the very core of the mystery of elements, witness the subtle alchemical mutations of life, stand watch for the indomitable grace of light. Gifted with infinite patience, lingering for the slightest gold glitter in the wind, he unveils the sensual intimacy of the emotiveness of melting ice, catching the magic instant were the sky meets with water, the delicacy of fresh dew drops on the luminous whiteness on a field of wild flowers, convoking the complicity of the sun to reveal the undulating highlights in the hair of an innocent child. Aveillan is a poet, in harmony with the invisible, in intelligence with the sacred, he is of this calibre of men who are in profound communion with their art.”

In an interview with the British art critic Stephen Whelan, Bruno mentioned that he is fascinated and interested by the research and writings on memory and especially those by Israel Rosenfield. « Mnemonic acquisition, such as memories are linked to their context and are therefore incredibly selective. Information that lacks a certain affective or emotional context does not get memorised, so the idea that we are able to search our memories with any precision as we would search on a hard disc, remains rather pointless. » Bruno Aveillan confides.

He believed that ‘emotion linked to the memory often stems from a fragmented evocation. A sound, a scent, a texture and, of course, a light can create a strong field of powerful resonances that translate into synesthetic shapes’.

Bruno Aveillan aims to distance himself from the illusionary realist photographical representation and favours a more impressionistic, fragmented and above all, poetic approach. ‘ This approach touches on the intimate, sometimes upon the edges of abstraction. It is a mental panorama that opens rather than closes, allowing the spectator’s imagination to unfold ” he states. ‘It is then a matter of offering areas of uncertainty that provide the mind with the possibility of re-appropriating the moment, like an intuitive and sensorial travelogue.’

At a time when the photographic academism of the new objectivity is overwhelming contemporary production, Bruno Aveillan’s work reveals an emotional dimension that is deeply rooted in the being. The viewer can thus form his or her own ‘picture’, and continue the intimate progress of a story, a feeling, an experience, a dream…

Bruno Aveillan’s style is characterised by a certain way of “ drawing with light ” or “ obscuring with light ” as stated by Contemporary artist Marcos Lutyens in his preface of Aveillan’s book Diotopes. What thus emerges is a unique signature and a singular aesthetic, that hides and/or reveals by the intervention of optical blurs mastered with precision during the shoot. In 2010, he produced Mnemo # Lux, his second book of photography, in which the german curator Jan Ole Eggert (Camera Work Gallery) emphasises the artist’s “ powerful desire for knowledge that seeks to penetrate the obscurity of relationships between man and human existence ”.

Bruno Aveillan’s photographs are regularly exhibited throughout the world and are included in prestigious private and public collections in Europe, the United States, and Asia. He is also the author of the official picture of the first Contemporary Arts festival “ Nuit Blanche ”, which took place in Paris in 2002.

His work includes books such as Diotopes (Ed. Léo Scheer, 2008), Mnemo # Lux (Ed. Kerber, 2010), Fascinatio (Ed. Chez Higgins, 2011), Fulguratio (Ed. Chez Higgins, 2011), Bolshoi Underground (Ed. Au delà du raisonnable, 2012), Acetate Spirit (Ed. NOIR) and films such as Minotaur-Ex (2006), Morpholab (2009), WHEAT (2008) and Papillon (2012).