Guillaume Pilet was born in 1984 in Switzerland, where he currently lives and works.
Since graduating from ECAL, (Lausanne University of Art and Design — BFA 2007, MFA 2010), he has been leading a career mixing experimental and institutional, local and international.
Main personal exhibitions include: A certain, je ne sais quoi (CCS, Paris, 2008), Learning to Love (Kunsthaus, Glarus, 2014), Síntese Humanista (Kunsthalle, São Paulo, 2014), Dream a Little Drama (Primary, Nottingham, 2017), Biopic (MCBA, Lausanne, 2017), My Life as a Parade (CCSP, Paris, 2018). [full list]
From 2010 to 2014, Pilet's practice focused on a peculiar project entitled Learning from Aping, consisting in a series of exhibitions, performances, videos — as well as an archive and book collection— exclusively dedicated to apes.
After 2014 and until 2018, Guillaume Pilet developped a new body of works under the title La Mesure Harmonique, mostly composed of ambitous performances. This led him to conceive The Dramaticon, an experimental pop opera inspired by his own childhood memories.
As a curator, he organized many projects as a freelancer or in collectives, notably as a co-director of Forde in Geneva from 2010 to 2012.
He is a founding member of Tunnel Tunnel, independant art space in Lausanne, since 2016..
Guillaume Pilet’s art blurs the borders between the usual categories. If painting is often in the centre of the process, conceptually and practically, what is displayed to the viewers is taking many forms. Always proposed as something to be felt and experienced, Pilet’s exhibitions and performances are questioning the intimate and the universal.
« Guillaume Pilet describes himself—although he already counts among today’s established young Swiss artists—as an interested amateur in the world of art. In his works, he skillfully juggles between high and low, art and do-it-yourself, and, in so doing, incessantly blurs the boundaries between the genres. Naive forms and motifs, simple materials and techniques such as wood, ceramic, batik or sponge painting, and everyday objects are intermixed with references and figures from art history and the sciences. He energetically blends intuition and careful analysis, aesthetics of bad taste and distinguished chic. »
Sabine Rusterholz Petko
« In a present that sees much contemporary art practice — so keen to perform diagnostically while unabashedly tacking its postulations onto the broader stories that apparently define our age, Pilet's enigmatic and introspective world gives us pause for a different kind of reflection; one that is not necessarily thought so much as it is felt. »
Jamie Sutcliffe
Awards and grants:
Swiss Art Award (2009, 2010), Prix Mobilière Young Art (2008), Prix Buchet (2017), Kiefer Hablitzel Preis (2013), Prix UBS pour la Culture (2018), Bourse culturelle du Canton de Vaud (2017, 2020)
Collections:
MCBA Lausanne, MAMCO Geneva, Swiss Federal Art Collection, FRAC Normandie Caen, FMAC Geneva, FCAC Geneva, Ville de Lausanne, Canton de Vaud, Swiss National Bank, BCV Art Collection, Crédit Suisse, Julius Bär, Helvetia, ...
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