Virgile Loyer

Curriculum Vitae

Virgile Loyer, born in Paris in 1975, is a French artist who combines cinematography with ceramic art.
Since 2001, he has been working on documentary and poetic research, expressed in films, theatre and dance.
In 2008, he made the film DONC, a portrait of writer Marcel Moreau, with which he began a series of collaborations with prominent artists, including actor Denis Lavant and painter Alechinsky.

From 2015, Loyer began collaborating with ceramist Alain Gaudebert, leading to the concept of ‘ceramic films’, in which ceramics evoke a cinematic experience. This groundbreaking approach brings narrative depth and visual poetry to ceramic art.

Since 2019, he has led an ambitious project at Mount Analogue, where he creates ceramic sculptures.

Loyer’s work transforms ceramics into a medium of stories and emotions, with a lasting impact on the contemporary art world.

Inspiration

The works are real.
As sculptures are made of clay and baked in a wood-fired kiln.
Double inspired by René Daumal and Marcel Moreau, poets who are no longer among us. These sculptures are like literary adaptations.

Some time ago, Virgile Loyer decided to set up a multidisciplinary expedition in search of Mont Analogue, an island in the southern hemisphere described as the highest mountain in the world, to which Daumal and his team never returned.

Each sculpture is designed as a landmark to mark a symbolic journey. Named ‘Kerguelen’ or ‘Analogy’, each milestone illuminated by the stars that mark an imaginary topography indicating a place.

Assembled with clay plates around and pair of large power lines.
The sculptures are made around an empty space.  They suggest the existence of an inner and an outer landscape, similar doubles of another world.

Free translation
To Stéphanie Le Follic-Hadida
Art historian and vice-president of the IAC

Technique

For the Analogies series, I assemble the sculptures with clay plates that I have cut and textured beforehand on the turntable.
There can be several dozen clay plates in a single piece; the surface is first, the assembly can only be done from the inside, in cavities.

I liken this assembly to mountain climbing, with hair-raising climbs.
Once the top is reached, I continue working on the geological surface, applying clay, minerals and ash glazes.

Finally, I bake the piece in the wood oven.
It is essential for me to bake with wood because, as Paul Valéry wrote, while fire works, man is consumed.