Thomas Cap de Ville

Born 1978, lives and works in Paris.

His practice draws from the notion of inner worlds and the collection of objects as an obsession. Traces are what constitutes the primary ressource of his work to pay tribute to teenage years and young adulthood of the late nineties and early 2000 counter-culture. Accumulating souvenirs, keeping and reminding them is a way of romanticizing his own existence and celebrate life. The artist tells us in his work stories of fraternity, erotic adventures and trips under the influence. His books, photographies, drawings and movies forms his life’s archives. His installations take the form of altars, gathering these small objects that became talismans and illustrate the social organisation of a generation. His videos of nocturnal walks put on the appearence of ritual dances.

Thomas Cap de Ville’s works constitues a series of 12 books presenting themselves as journals at the image of the artist. Under layers of tape, we discover photographies, polaroids, make-up palette, medecine box, hairs, teeths, dried flowers,… They are pieces of the artist’s life, presented as a family album of objets and images collected since he turned 18 in 1996 until today. The people we find through the pages are his friends, they sometimes look pale, sad, or in the contrary are ecstatic. They are the wintess of a mystified teenagehood where violence rub shoulders with innocence. Here, the chaos of youth is meticulously organised, dissected under forms of emotional samples of time.

Thomas Cap de Ville started out in fashion and created videos in collaboration with various musicians such as La Chatte. His work was then part of collective projects such as at the Fondation Cartier (Paris, 2011). He inaugurated his first solo shows at Goswell Road (Paris, 2017 and 2019). In 2020 he was an artist in residence at Confort Moderne (Poitiers) where he presented his first institutional personal exhibition. His work has been shown since in solo exhibitions at Exo Exo (Paris, 2021 and 2022) ; Galeria Miroslav Kraljevic (Zagreb, 2022) ; Lars Friedrich (Berlin, 2024) and in institutional group exhibitions at CRAC Alsace (Altkirch, 2024) ; CRÉDAC (Ivry-sur-Seine, 2024) ; Kunsthalle Praha (Prague, 2023) ; FRAC Corsica (Corte, 2023) and group shows in galleries at Tenko Presents (Tokyo, 2024) ; Mendes Wood (Brussels, 2022) ; Colette Mariana (Barcelona, 2022) ; Galerie Hussenot (Paris, 2020)