Xavier Theunis

By way of a multifaceted oeuvre, Xavier Theunis introduces an artistic vocabulary based in particular on a personal re-reading of elements of interior architecture, objects, and design furniture. By appropriating some of the gimmicks of upmarket contemporary domesticity, he produces a glossy and seductive oeuvre. Whether he covers pages of decoration magazines with white paint showing just the lines of the contours of objects in space or whether he recomposes, shade on shade (using adhesive tape on aluminium) the "Favela" armchair designed by the Campana brothers, the artist works on a return to the surface, and on flat transformation. The shift from three to two dimensions, and vice versa, represents one of the themes of Xavier Theunis's work. The change of status between the object and its representation (between space and its representation), and its translation, enables him to produce disconcerting forms, which are at once familiar and unstable (like this sculpture representing a drawing table with an impossible perspective titled sans titre, table de dessin 2010). His oeuvre is at times all-encompassing and environmental, so the artist manages to compose unreal spaces with suspect perfection which unravel the traditional exhibition venue.