Wilding Cran Gallery
Skip to main content
  • Menu
  • Artists
  • Exhibitions
  • Art Fairs
  • Press
  • Contact
  • Viewing Room
Cart
0 items £
Checkout

Item added to cart

View cart & checkout
Continue shopping
Menu

Vikky Alexander: Les Jardins de Versailles

Past exhibition
12 November - 22 December 2022
  • Overview
  • Installation Views
  • Works
  • Press
Overview
Vikky Alexander, Les Jardins de Versailles

Wilding Cran Gallery is pleased to announce Les Jardins De Versailles, an exhibition of recent work by Montreal-based artist Vikky Alexander.

 

Since the 1980s, Vikky Alexander has utilized sculpture, collage, photography, and video to explore utopian illusions at the nexus of desire, capitalism, and commodification in modern culture. While her earlier work focuses on the idealization of glamor in contemporary advertising and consumer culture, Les Jardins De Versailles sets out to penetrate the fantasy of constructed environments. Expanding upon her fascinations with appropriated imagery, Alexander draws on 18th century architectural engravings of Versailles as the template for her conceptual collages. 

 

Upon entering the exhibition space, the viewer is invited to peer through abstracted, polychromatic portals into the geometric topiaries of the Palace of Versailles. Mounted on aluminum, Alexander's collages source imagery from advertisements, magazines, origami, shelving paper, and archives of her own photography. The resulting prints incorporate color and black and white in a surprising landscape where abstraction and realism collide. Through the varying textures of tall grasses, woodgrains, photographic pixels, textiles, and color fields, we catch the occasional glimpse of an airplane's contrail, a parking lot, a model's hand, a flower market permeating the simulacra, shattering the illusion of virtual tourism to remind us that not all is as it seems.

 

In the Age of Absolutism, the design of pleasure parks led to major technological developments that allowed for the manipulation of water and soil, vegetation and climate. Throughout the gardens of Versailles, these mechanisms were harnessed to mold and reflect the power, leisure, and romance of elite society. The theatrical staging of Les Jardins De Versailles exudes a juxtaposed air of sterility and wilderness, an homage to the cultural desire for mastery over nature. The process of cropping, enlarging, rearranging, and collaging distinct, yet unplaceable images constructs an animated labyrinth of the luxurious flora and cascading fountains that came to characterize the aristocratic landscape of 18th century France. Alongside the artist's characteristic photo collages, immersive floor- to-ceiling vinyl murals further serve to transpose the viewer, to the point that we may not know on which side of the smokescreen we stand.

 

Throughout her body of work, Vikky Alexander explores methods of landscaping the sublime in order to expose the seams that bind our visions of utopia. The exhibition of Les Jardins De Versailles pieces together a puzzle of composite desires, revealing the relationship between banality and luxury, void and folly. Leading us through simulated views of the Baths of Apollo, the Arc de Triomphe, and the Grove of Domes, Alexander brings the viewer into a metaphysical space charged with layers of artifice to confront the playful, albeit sinister performance of paradise. 

 

Les Jardins De Versailles is Alexander's third solo exhibition at Wilding Cran Gallery.

Share
  • Facebook
  • X
  • Pinterest
  • Tumblr
  • Email
Download Press Release
Download List of Works
Installation Views
  • Les Jardins Install 1
  • Les Jardins Install 4
  • Les Jardins Install 6
  • Les Jardins Install 3
  • Les Jardins Install 5
  • Les Jardins Install 2
  • Les Jardins Install 9
  • Les Jardins Install 10
  • Les Jardins Install 7
  • Les Jardins Install 8
  • Les Jardins Install 11
  • Les Jardins Install 12
Works
  • Vikky Alexander, Vue des Bains d’Apollon, 2021
    Vikky Alexander
    1959
    Vue des Bains d’Apollon, 2021
    Inkjet print mounted on dibond
    40 x 60 inches 101.60 x 152.40 cm.
    Edition 2 of 3 (#2/3)
  • Vikky Alexander, Vue du Bassin de Neptune (autre perspective), 2021
    Vikky Alexander
    1959
    Vue du Bassin de Neptune (autre perspective), 2021
    Inkjet print mounted on dibond
    40 x 60 inches 101.60 x 152.40 cm.
    Edition 2 of 3 (#2/3)
  • Vikky Alexander, Vue de la Salle du Bal, 2021
    Vikky Alexander
    Vue de la Salle du Bal, 2021
    Inkjet print mounted on dibond
    48 x 48 inches
    121.9 x 121.9 cm.
    49¼ x 49¼ x 2 inches (framed)
    125.09 x 125.09 x 5.08 cm. (framed)
    Edition 2 of 3 (#2/3)
  • Vikky Alexander, [Mural] Vue du Bassin d'Apollon
    Vikky Alexander
    1959
    [Mural] Vue du Bassin d'Apollon
    Self adhesive Orofol #3105HT w/ matte laminate
    Dimensions variable
  • Vikky Alexander, Vue des Trois Fontaines (autre perspective), 2021
    Vikky Alexander
    1959
    Vue des Trois Fontaines (autre perspective), 2021
    Inkjet print mounted on dibond
    40 x 60 inches 101.60 x 152.40 cm.
    Edition 2 of 3 (#2/3)
  • Vikky Alexander, Vue de theatre d’eau, 2021
    Vikky Alexander
    1959
    Vue de theatre d’eau, 2021
    Inkjet print mounted on dibond
    40 x 60 inches 101.60 x 152.40 cm.
    Edition 2 of 3 (#2/3)
  • Vikky Alexander, Vue du Bosquet des Domes, 2021
    Vikky Alexander
    1959
    Vue du Bosquet des Domes, 2021
    Inkjet print mounted on dibond
    40 x 60 inches 101.60 x 152.40 cm.
    Edition 2 of 3 (#2/3)
  • Vikky Alexander, Vue de l’Arc de Triomphe, 2021
    Vikky Alexander
    1959
    Vue de l’Arc de Triomphe, 2021
    Inkjet print mounted on dibond
    40 x 60 inches 101.60 x 152.40 cm.
    Edition 2 of 3 (#2/3)
  • Vikky Alexander, Vue de la Salle du Bal (autre perspective), 2021
    Vikky Alexander
    1959
    Vue de la Salle du Bal (autre perspective), 2021
    Inkjet print mounted on dibond
    40 x 60 inches 101.60 x 152.40 cm.
    Edition 2 of 3 (#2/3)
  • Vikky Alexander, Vue du Bassin de l’Encelade, 2021
    Vikky Alexander
    1959
    Vue du Bassin de l’Encelade, 2021
    Inkjet print mounted on dibond
    48 x 48 inches 121.92 x 121.92 cm.
    Edition 2 of 3 (#2/3)
  • Vikky Alexander, Vue des Bains d'Apollon, autre perspective, 2021
    Vikky Alexander
    1959
    Vue des Bains d'Apollon, autre perspective, 2021
    Self adhesive Orofol #3105HT w/ matte laminate
  • Vikky Alexander, Vue de Theatre d’eau (autre perspective), 2021
    Vikky Alexander
    1959
    Vue de Theatre d’eau (autre perspective), 2021
    Inkjet print mounted on dibond
    40 x 60 inches 101.60 x 152.40 cm.
    Edition 2 of 3 (#2/3)
  • Vikky Alexander, Vue du Bassin de Neptune, 2021
    Vikky Alexander
    1959
    Vue du Bassin de Neptune, 2021
    Inkjet print mounted on dibond
    40 x 60 inches 101.60 x 152.40 cm.
    Edition 2 of 3 (#2/3)
  • Vikky Alexander, Vue des Trois Fontaines, 2021
    Vikky Alexander
    1959
    Vue des Trois Fontaines, 2021
    Inkjet print mounted on dibond
    40 x 60 inches 101.60 x 152.40 cm.
    Edition 2 of 3 (#2/3)
Press
  • VIKKY ALEXANDER "LES JARDINS DE VERSAILLES" @ WILDING CRAN GALLERY

    Autre Magazine, November 15, 2022

Related artist

  • Vikky Alexander

    Vikky Alexander

Back to exhibitions
Privacy Policy
Manage cookies
Copyright © 2025 WILDING CRAN GALLERY
Site by Artlogic
Facebook, opens in a new tab.
Instagram, opens in a new tab.
Ocula, opens in a new tab.

This website uses cookies
This site uses cookies to help make it more useful to you. Please contact us to find out more about our Cookie Policy.

Manage cookies
Accept

Cookie preferences

Check the boxes for the cookie categories you allow our site to use

Cookie options
Required for the website to function and cannot be disabled.
Improve your experience on the website by storing choices you make about how it should function.
Allow us to collect anonymous usage data in order to improve the experience on our website.
Allow us to identify our visitors so that we can offer personalised, targeted marketing.
Save preferences
Close

Join our mailing list

Signup

* denotes required fields

We will process the personal data you have supplied to communicate with you in accordance with our Privacy Policy. You can unsubscribe or change your preferences at any time by clicking the link in our emails.