Claude Lévêque

In the late 1970s, Claude Lévêque often took the train to Paris, where an avant-garde scene was taking shape. It was there, and not in the art world, that Lévêque drew his influences, and developed the foundations of his work.

In 1982, he took part for the first time in a group show at the Maison des arts et de la culture in Créteil, where he presented an installation entitled Grand Hôtel (a work he still keeps today). He first exhibited in France in 1984, before exporting his work to Europe, America and Asia; he regularly took part in contemporary art biennales such as those in Lyon and Havana in 2003. At the end of April 2008, he was chosen to represent France at the 2009 Venice Biennale.

Claude Lévêque prefers to work in situ. Although he has often worked in the field of objects, his choices lean towards the creation of spaces and atmospheres. Close to the punk movement, but also to other alternative cultures, Claude Lévêque rejects blind acceptance of the established order.

In 2014 and 2015, Claude Lévêque was invited by the Musée du Louvre to dress the museum entrance, the Ieoh Ming Pei pyramid and then the moats and keep of the medieval Louvre. The artist presents the cinematic influences that run through his work at a screening and discussion session in the Louvre auditorium, focusing on the works of Dario Argento and Kenneth Anger.

In 2018, for the 350th anniversary of the Opéra Garnier and the 30th anniversary of the Opéra Bastille in Paris, he created the Saturnales installations: two gilded sculptures at Garnier and a luminous "diadem" at Bastille.

In 2019, for the 3ème Scène, he created Le lac perdu, an invitation to travel, a dreamlike stroll through the world of the Garnier and Bastille opera houses. The artifice and ephemerality of the show are put into perspective in a luminous and disquieting work.