Jakob Gautel

Jakob Gautel
Period: 1999-2000
Occupation: Visual artist Born in 1965 in Karlsruhe, Germany, he moved to Paris to study at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, where he worked in drawing, graphics, photography and installation with Christian Boltanski. He lives and works in Paris and elsewhere. He exhibits in France and abroad, and experiments with art forms outside conventional spaces : posters, action, performances, interventions… He takes part in numerous exhibitions in galleries, museums and art centers, in artists’ spaces and associative spaces, participates in art biennales in France and abroad, actions in the urban space, interventions in towns and neighborhoods as well as projects and interventions seeking to redefine the artist’s relationship with his public, works with directors and choreographers, makes projects with children. He creates artworks for public spaces, makes proposals for 1 %, collaborates with craftsmen, and spent six months in Indonesia between 1995 and 1997, and from 1999 to 2000 at the Villa Médicis in Rome. In 2008, he was named Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. Since 2001, he has also been teaching at the School of Architecture, first in Versailles and for several years now at La Villette, in the undergraduate and master’s programs in the ” Art, scenography and architecture ” department. He works with photography, video, installation, projections, books, etc., each time choosing the most appropriate technique for his subject. The common thread in his work is not a technique or a subject, but rather a search, on the edge between reality and fiction, between the world of appearances and what lies behind, between being and appearing, and between the outer and inner worlds. Production of meaning rather than production of objects…