Artist
Yves Hayat
Shirin Gallery NY, in association with Mark Hachem Gallery, is pleased to present Violent Luxury, the solo exhibition of Egypt born, France-based artist, Yves Hayat. The show features Hayat’s recent multi-media photographic and sculptural works that deal with the paradox of a “violent luxury.” In explaining his work, the artist admits that he is more interested in manipulating reality than attempting to record it:
“I am a total visual consumer. I film, download, scan, retouch… as the director of a new reality. Using superimpositions and appropriations, I confront past and present, beauty and horror, luxury and violence, indifference and fanaticism. Through questioning art, politics, and media relations, I try to conceive a critical artwork, where the attraction for the culture of media, cinema, and advertising shows through.”
In the late 1960’s, Hayat spent five years studying art at the Ecole Nationale des Arts Décoratifs of Nice, before pursuing a career in advertisement. By the 1990’s, Hayat abandoned this profession and returned to his art practice. His experience in both art and business translates in Violent Luxury, which deconstructs notions of production, marketing, and consumption. In an essay for the exhibition, educator François Birembaux writes:
“Violent Luxury makes us reflect on real and symbolic violence within representations of luxury…the exhibition is a dazzling demonstration of an addiction to both luxury and war… For those who know where to look, Yves Hayat shows that the representation of luxury is another form of violence, transfigured and legitimized. Inexplicably, we are propelled through mysteries of the ‘marketing’ and the ‘packaging’ of luxury, towards a compulsion that at times would seem responsible or even useful, but which, in fact, dehumanize us… The originality of Hayat’s works lies in the amalgam of artistic insight and the images from an information-based society.”
The multi-media nature of Hayat’s work – and his background in commercial marketing – present tension that is expressed through the words and images showcased, as well as in their construction. Birembaux explains that “Hayat is widely known as a plasticien, an untranslatable French term that refers to an artist who puts the meaning of his work to the fore, and uses various media and techniques to express it.”
Following his years in advertising, Hayat exhibited in solo exhibitions at the Paris City Hall, Alliance Francaise of Montevideo, Docks of Marseilles, the Venice Biennale, all France, among others abroad in Geneva, Brussels, and Kuwait. He has also participated in group exhibitions at the Sigmund Freud Museum and Klosterneuburg Monastery, both Vienna, as well as in art fairs such as Art Miami New York, Art Southampton,NY; Scope Miami, Scope Basel, Art Beirut, Contemporary Istanbul, Art Cologne, Art14, London; Art Stage Singapore, and India Art Fair in New Delhi.