List of products by brand Virgil Brill
Born in France
PUBLIC COLLECTIONS
Fondation Regards de Provence, Marseille – France
Fonds Municipal d’Art Contemporain, Marseille – France
Reflex Museum (Musée de la miniature) Amsterdam – Pays Bas
Center for Photography, Woodstock – USA
Maison de la Photographie, Prague – République Tchèque
Musée Jénisch, Vevey – Suisse
SELECTED EXHIBITIONS
2013
Mim galerie, Martel (Mémoire du Pays d'Or)
2011
Salon Balt’Art Contemporain, Pavillon Baltard, Paris (Nogent/Marne)
Salon MACParis, Espace Champerret
2010
“ las Sombras, el tiempo y tambien el viento” C.C. Recoleta, Biennale “Encuentros abiertos” Buenos Aires, Argentine
Salon MACParis, Espace Champerret
2008
le Temps et les Ombres, “Photo Event” de Turnhout, Belgique
2007
Migrations, Château-Musée de l’Impéri, Salon-de-Provence, à l’occasion de la sortie du livre “l’Aventure intérieure”
l’Impossible révélation, Espace Commines, Paris (Rencontres Leica)
2004
Nouvelles Migrations & les Fées – à la Galerie Athanor à Marseille.
Nouvelles Migrations au Cloître des Carmes, dans le cadre de «Chemins de traverse», en Avignon
2003
Eaux douces, eaux salées – Exposition thématique à l’Atelier des Eyguesiers, Aix-en-Provence
Rencontres d’Arles, exposition avec William Ropp, Claire Petit et Véronique Brill, 3 rue du Séminaire.
Migrations 2003 lors du Festival Itinérant Pyrénéen à Montgarri en Espagne.
Cami de Aigua, Installation de grandes toiles au bord du torrent à La Seu d’Urgel en Espagne.
Galerie Krisal lors de Paris Photo au Carrousel du Louvre
Le livre des Migrations et le livre des Fées, à Lilas en scène (Paris-Les Lilas)
2002
Migrations – Galerie Koen Lauwaert, Bruxelles
Vous y étiez, nue, avant le crépuscule & other stories - Blibliothèque Universitaire du Technopôle de Marseille Provence.
Rencontres d’Arles, Exposition avec William Ropp, rue des Pénitents Bleus
Le Ruisseau, Espace Originel, Montalivet, Médoc
Nue dans un rêve ancien (Photo&vidéo) - Atelier des Eyguesiers, Aix-en-Provence
2001
Atelier des Eyguesiers, Aix-en-Provence exposition collective
La Femme – exposition thématique de la Fondation Regards de Provence Château Borély, Marseille
« E et L » – exposition thématique Atelier des Eyguesiers, Aix-en-Provence
Rencontres en Arles, 7 rue de la Liberté exposition avec William Ropp
Le Corps photographié – (Expo thématique) Maison des Arts, Carcès
Migrations – dans le cadre du “Parcours de l’Art”Salle Benoît XII, Avignon
2000
Galerie Athanor, Marseille
Espace Originel, Montalivet
DeFrog Gallery, Houston, Texas (USA)
1999
Galerie Athanor, Marseille
Fort Napoléon, La Seyne-sur-Mer et La Bouchonnerie, Pierrefeu du Var
Rêves ou réalités - Château Borély, Marseille exposition thématique Fondation Regards de Provence
Galerie Athanor, Marseille, exposition collective
Frères humains – Espace Originel, Montalivet
1998
Les Pénitents Bleus, La Ciotat
Espace originel, Montalivet
Salon Art et Entreprise - Fondation Vasarély, Aix-en-Provence
1995
Galerie Brenet-Nicolaï, Marseille (Mémoire du Pays d'Or)
1993
Hôtel de Claviers, Brignoles (Mémoire du Pays d'Or)
At dawn, at certain dawns, a man leaves his home and takes to the roads. He looks into the distance, waits, looks again, always far away. Eventually, and sometimes, the man stops and opens a small box facing the real world. The light of the real world enters the opening of the box and flirts with silver bromide gelatin. From this encounter, a few chemical steps later, an object is born, called a negative. The man, whose name is Virgil Brill, then entrusts the thing to another man, a renowned craftsman who, slowly and with a thousand mysteries, applies secrets discovered by his father and grandfather. The result is there.
Strangely, in the result, there are winks from old Chinese Taoist poets—Li Po, Zhuangzi, Chen Tao, and that whole band. I tuck these pranksters into a corner—they are disruptive—and ask the first question: is it photography or painting?
“It’s photography,” says Virgil—just as Henri Cartier-Bresson would say “cinematography.” But the question is not useless.
Blurred Memory
“I do not situate my work in anecdotes or in current events. There are people who do that wonderfully, but I am neither descriptive nor narrative.” And yet the photographs that Virgil Brill is currently presenting at the Chapelle des Pénitents Bleus cling to that elusive reality slipping away before us. His exhibition, titled Migration – Migrations, speaks to us of all those inner borders we cross clandestinely—sometimes with delight, sometimes with dread. It tells of the free movement of souls, of the search for an intimate right of asylum that might finally bring peace.
There is no need, then, to look for undocumented migrants, Bosnians, or Rwandans behind the naked silhouettes that obsessively populate Virgil Brill’s images. No need to try to assign names to these human forms captured through his deliberately blurred lens. In another context, they might simply be nudists in August, somewhere in France, along the Atlantic coast. But here, neither the individuals nor the space are identified. Stretches of sand, then sea, then sky—endlessly.
Horizons overlap, marking the finitude of this world without forbidding us to imagine, or hope for, other possibilities. And here and there, these shadows going about their business. The ordinary blurred. There is no longer any innocent situation, only the human condition—this status of a gregarious animal moving alone toward a destiny it does not know. The feeling of solitude emerges precisely from this multitude and from the blur.
The constant play with framing and formats multiplies points of view, bringing what Virgil Brill calls “configurations charged with meaning.” A sensory relief reinforced by a musical dimension (a sound installation by Georges Lartigau). Nor is the word absent, since the writer Jacques Serena weaves his text (yet another story of impossible love) around, between, and within the beautiful book that places this encounter in another duration: that of the page.
— Fred Kahn, in Le Pavé, May–June 1998
