Introducing: Loris Greaud

PARIS (Modern Painters)—Over the course of a year, a mysterious black mountain some 11 feet high appeared and disappeared throughout Paris. Towed by a small black car to bewildering effect, rumors sparked each time it was sighted. In October of last year, the faux rock formation rolled up at the Pompidou Center revealing itself to be a sculpture by French artist Loris Greaud.

Devil's Tower Satellite (2005), as it is known, is a resin replica of the famous Devils Tower monolith in Wyoming. This fugitive mountain appeared in another work by Greaud, the inflatable Untitled (A Prophecy) (2006). This version of the Devils Tower was installed in the Palais de Tokyo in January 2006 for three months only to reveal itself, suddenly, to be a huge hot-air balloon: early one morning it took off and disappeared into the skies.

Or did it? Nobody could be sure. Only a single photograph depicts this apocryphal event, which occurred without other witnesses. Greaud remains deliberately unclear about the structure’s exit strategy and current whereabouts. Did he even have permission to fly over Paris?

The Devils Tower monolith appears, memorably, in Steven Spielberg’s 1977 sci-fi classic Close Encounters of the Third Kind. In Spielberg’s film, the massive stone formation serves as a beacon for extra-terrestrials, and the film’s human characters become obsessed with its form. Although they have never seen it, they inexplicably know its contours and location and are in thrall to its powerful magnetism.

Greaud’s use of Devils Tower not only signals his obsession with science fiction and the extrasensory; the related projects function in synecdoche to his overall body of work. His oeuvre tests the limits of how we know what we know and the limits of our senses—was that really a small hill I saw moving in the distance? Because his works defy easy or quick apprehension—they attempt to exist everywhere and nowhere at the same time—the viewer is left to contemplate Greaud’s sporadically dematerialized artworks as well as the intricate system of communication that is, in the end, their only true location and medium.

Greaud's career has enjoyed a glittering ascension. Before graduating from Paris-Cergy art school in 2004, he was already showing at the gb agency gallery in Paris. A few months later, in 2005, the alternative space Le Plateau organized his first solo exhibition in Paris. But even here, he operated with a kind of schizophrenia: he simultaneously held an exhibition at Le Plateau and at a private apartment in Paris.

He was only 28 when he was awarded the Priz Ricard S.A. in 2006, one of the most prestigious contemporary art awards in France, which included the small solo exhibition at the Pompidou Center of Devils Tower Satellite. Later this year he will occupy the whole of Palais de Tokyo—an entirely new gambit for both parties, as it will be the first time an artist has been given the entire museum to work in.

Given that the format, circulation and appearance of Gréaud's existing works are all subject to change, one could expect to see familiar motifs take on new forms in this venue. Just as Devils Tower Satellite mutated into Untitled (A Prophecy), his works are often revised and reintroduced under new auspices, possessing new stories and different stakes. Altered or recontextualized, their transformations leave spectators to doubt the memory of what they saw or believed they saw.

Exploring phenomenological concerns might sound akin to, say, James Turrell or Robert Irwin—and in fact Greaud's work does broach questions of physical limitations, for example, his recent nanosculptures (Epoxy photoresist sculptures visible only through microscopes, which were not provided). But the originality of Greaud lies in his setting up a complex system of relations and experiments to encourage confusion and illusion in spectators’ minds.

While other artists begin their career by looking for a studio, Greaud started by building up his own production means and a wide network of collaborators: thus, he works with architects, designers, scientists, special effects experts, filmmakers and musicians, but without managing them. According to him, an artist’s place is not on top of the pyramid. Instead, Greaud intervenes at different steps of the process. He loves getting lost in his own network.