French Sculptor Xavier Veilhan Unmasks Daft Punk

Xavier Veilhan Thomas Bangalter & Guy-Manuel de Homem (2015) Photo: The Creators Project

Xavier Veilhan’s new double exhibition at Galerie Perrotin’s New York and Paris locations explores the links between music and the visual arts, featuring likenesses of some of the most renowned pop music producers, the Creators Project reports.

Identifying the parallels between music producer and visual artist, the French sculptor explained that both were “a kind of not-very-visible person behind the work.” For the exhibition the artist depicted Quincy Jones, the Neptunes (Pharrell Williams and Chad Hugo), Lee “Scratch” Perry, Rick Rubin, and others.

But the highlight of the show is undoubtedly a sculpture of the mysterious French electronic music duo Daft Punk, who agreed to be portrayed without their trademark helmets. “The funny thing is I didn’t even ask them,” Veilhan told the Creators Project, “They proposed to me ‘Okay, we should make the sculpture the non-existing image of us. So if somebody wants to see how we are like in real [life] they’ll have to look at the sculpture.’”

The project’s unique artistic process involves combining digital body scan technology with reference portraits sketched by the artist. Veilhan revealed some of his frustrations with this method, “If you want the person to stay still, you can’t talk to them. It was strange because you have all of my heroes, and you’re in the same room, but you can’t really talk. Sort of a frustrating process, but also very funny.”

Xavier Veilhan’s Music runs from February 26 to April 11 at Galerie Perrotin.


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