Guillaume Pilet
My Life as a Parade, 2017

Guillaume Pilet is a multifaceted artist, working in paints, sculpture, ceramics, installations, performances, and opera to explore the language of abstraction and the afterlives of forms, motifs, and techniques that distantly chime with it. My Life as a Parade, the set of forty drawings he produced for his solo exhibition at the Museum in 2017, look back at his own artistic journey. He documents the typical milestones of artists’ lives, a more or less standard narrative tradition dating back to the mid-sixteenth century, with the discovery of a calling, training in a master’s studio, coming into contact with peers in a ritual going from reference to deference to difference. Pilet combines this narrative tradition with a more idiosyncratic, personal account of his own life.

The drawings represent key moments in his development in the form of a parade, like the village parades he took part in as a child in rural Switzerland. Each drawing represents a float or theme. The titles maintain the narration, acting as titles waiting for their chapter. The first part can be read as a homage to his father, an artist who died when he was a child. The drawings recounting his time as an art student in Lausanne reflect the works of the artists who influenced his practice – John M Armleder, Philippe Decrauzat, Francis Baudevin – and his friends and peers who have worked together with him on joint projects, including Claudia Comte and Jean-Luc Manz.

Many of Pilet’s works feature monkeys, here showcased in a single drawing, I Ape Therefore I Am. It is a self-portrait of the artist as a painter undergoing metamorphosis, aping other artists’ colours with wit and a touch of self-derision.