Sylvio Marchand

Sylvio Marchand studied at Valenciennes and Toulouse École de Beaux-Arts. He lives and works in Paris. In 2012 Sylvio Marchand covered the Galerie Jeune Création’s ground, walls and ceiling with silicone moulding rubber. As silicone does not stick to itself, the layer slowly collapsed. While the exhibition lasted, the gallery’s space gradually sloughed off its skin.

During a residency in Düsseldorf in 2013, he transferred screen grabs of nine seconds of a Youtube video showing the destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas onto plaster slabs. The 220 images were accompanied by a stele covered with six years’ worth of user comments. At the 2014 Salon de Montrouge, he showed a vintage wood and marble table restored as if by order of a faulty computer program.

In his sculpture and installation work, Sylvio Marchand explores irrational scenarios with rationality, using – among others – the archaeologist’s, the restorer’s and curator’s techniques. Through his ‘restorations’, Sylvio Marchand addresses the archaeology of our utopias, creating meaning from aesthetic instabilities.