Bruno Aveillan : Freedom in creativity
A former student at the Beaux-Arts schools in Perpignan and Toulouse, visual artist Bruno Aveillan devotes his activities to several fields of expression, marked by his exceptional visual imprint. According to publisher and gallery owner Léo Scheer, « He is one of the representatives of an incredible generation of multimedia artists whose approach reveals an ongoing quest to diversify media ».
Art and communication
The work of this internationally renowned director and photographer regularly wins awards around the world, such as his film L’Odyssée pour Cartier which, after its premiere at MoMA in New York, was seen by over 200 million viewers. The film won more than 40 international awards, including 2 Golden Lions at Cannes. The film Journey’s for Louis Vuitton also won numerous awards, including a Gold Clio Award and a Gold London International Award. Over the course of his career, Bruno Aveillan has won more than 280 international awards.
Bruno Aveillan has also directed prestige films for brands such as Chanel, Guerlain, Audi, Shangrila, BMW, Nike, Tiffany & Co, Perrier, Apple and Samsung, as well as major government campaigns such as the multi-award-winning #TOUS TOUCHÉS series of road safety films, and NGOs such as UNICEF, RSF, The Food Bank and The HeartFund, of which he is an ambassador.
In 2009, the Musée National des Arts Décoratifs in the Louvre devoted a retrospective to Bruno Aveillan’s work as part of a major exhibition dedicated to cinema and communication.
Plastic arts
At the same time, Bruno Aveillan has been building up a personal artistic body of work, consisting of photographs, experimental films and installations in which the recurring themes of nature, light, wandering and memory play major roles.
In a text entitled La grâce indomptable de la lumière (The indomitable grace of light), ZoéBalthus, writer and art critic, points out: « Bruno Aveillan is a poet, in harmony with the invisible, in intelligence with the sacred, of that breed of men in deep communion with their art ».
In an interview with the English journalist Stephen Whelan, the artist confides: « The emotion linked to memory often comes from a fragmentary evocation. A sound, a smell, a texture and, of course, a light can evoke around them a field of powerful resonances that translate into synesthetic forms.
When it comes to photography, Bruno Aveillan aims to move away from an illusory realistic representation in favour of a more impressionistic, fragmentary and certainly poetic approach. « This approach touches on the intimate, sometimes bordering on the abstract. It’s a mental panorama that opens up more than it closes, unfolding the viewer’s imagination, » he says. « It’s about offering spaces of uncertainty that allow the mind to reclaim the moment, like an intuitive, sensory travel diary.
In the preface to his book Bolshoi Underground, art critic and essayist Stéphan Lévy-Kuentzsays: « In contrast to the consensual epidemic of documentary photography, which is generally asked to record reality, Bruno Aveillan distorts the scopic laws in force by diluting the lineament in the mass. The dialectic of blur and sharpness, of daylight and half-light, that he employs, imposes a dynamic of disappearance, a personal aesthetic that, by skimming the surface, channels vision towards a residual image that resonates with the pictorial space, both scenographic and statuary ».
Bruno Aveillan’s signature style is to « draw with light », or to « obscure with light », as Marcos Luytens puts it in the preface to his book Diotopes (Éd. Léo Scheer). In 2010, on the occasion of his first retrospective in Berlin, he published Mnemo # Lux (Kerber), his second book of photographs, in which Jan Ole Eggert (Camera Work Gallery) emphasises « the artist’s powerful desire for knowledge, which seeks to penetrate the mysteries of relationships between people and of human existence ». Bruno Aveillan’s photographs are regularly exhibited around the world and form part of prestigious private and public collections in Europe, the United States and Asia. In 2010.
The Musée des Arts Décoratifs presented his experimental film Minotaur-Ex as part of the major exhibition Parcours Céramique, une scène française (curated by Frédéric Bodet). In March 2015, the prestigious MAMM (Multimedia Art Museum, Moscow) opened its doors to him for a major exhibition entitled Isolation Ceremony (Curator Olga Sveblova). At the same time, Bruno Aveillan exhibited a series entitled Outside at the Grand Palais as part of the Art Paris Art Fair. In the summer of 2015, the Perpignan contemporary art centre opened its doors to him for a major retrospective, entitled FLASHBACK and featuring over 120 works. In September of the same year, Bruno Aveillan will also be taking part in the group exhibition NARCISSE organised by the Musée Rigaud, alongside artists such as Miquel Barcelo, Sophie Calle, Christian Boltanski and Nan Goldin.
The artist was also responsible for the official photograph of the first edition of the Nuit Blanche nocturne contemporary art trail in Paris in 2002. Alongside artists such as David Hockney and Anton Corbjin, Bruno Aveillan was selected by the prestigious camera manufacturer Hasselblad to be published in VICTOR, a reference work devoted to fine art photography.
In 2017, Bruno Aveillan directed the film Divino Inferno dedicated to Rodin, to mark the centenary of the great sculptor’s death. The 60-minute film tells the unsuspected story of La Porte de l’Enfer (The Gates of Hell), one of the most enigmatic masterpieces in the history of art and the matrix of all the work of sculptor Auguste Rodin. Bruno Aveillan has created a poetic, sensory film of rare visual intensity. The director has explored all the secrets behind the creation of this fascinating monument, while painting the portrait of a visionary Rodin. He has surrounded himself with contemporary artists such as Mircea Cantor, to bring to light a carnal film of dazzling aesthetics, where the visual arts, dance and literature mingle, offering a new reading of the work of one of the greatest sculptors of all time. The film, produced and broadcast by the cultural channel Arte, has been exceptionally well received by critics (Le Monde, Télérama, Les Inrocks, Le Figaro Culture, ArtPress, etc.) and was awarded the prestigious ROCKY AWARD in the ART category. Divino Inferno has also been shown in major international museums (Moma, Barnes Philadelphia, Tokyo National Museum, Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art, etc.).
The artist is currently preparing an exhibition for 2024 in Shanghai on the theme of Art Deco, for which he will be responsible for the scenography (curated by Pamela Goblin).
Bruno Aveillan has won over 250 international awards in the course of his career, including an Outstanding Merit Cristal Award in 2012. He was awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award for Global Excellence at MoCA San Diego in 2014 and received a Visionary Artist Award of the year at the 2014 Milan Film Festival, a « Life Time Achievement Award » at the 2017 Bokeh Fashion Film Festival. Also in 2017, Bruno Aveillan was named « Best Director » and « Best Photographer » of the year by CB News Magazine.
