Born in 1971 in Paris.

An architect by training, Matthieu Kavyrchine draws his experience from the design of spaces built to devote himself to a visual practice, which leads him to join the post-graduate program of the Studio national des arts contemporains du Fresnoy, dedicated to audiovisual creation. He then developed several projects using different operating modes - photography, video, performance, collaborations with other artists - and began his reflection on mental space.

His encounter with Meg Stuart opens a series of collaborations with choreographers, as a guest artist, that allow him to explore, between 2000 and 2002, another vision of space - the more fluid one of the body in movement. From then on, his personal projects led him to invest the Villa Savoye in Le Corbusier (Habiter,2003), to stay overnight in a forest (D 104,2008), to immerse himself in empty theatres (Culture, 2008), to explore the American coasts on the Atlantic and Pacific coasts (Cables, 2010), to explore, as a speleologist, natural underground spaces (Gouffres, 2011) or post-industrial (C 42, 2016), or more recently, to take the measure of the time of waiting without horizon in the penal colony of Guyana (1517 days, 2018).

Influenced by the defenders of utopian architecture and research, such as François Roche with whom he collaborated in 2005, Matthieu Kavyrchine is at the initiative of the Office du Tourisme Nord-Est (O.T.N.E), a duo formed with designer Benoît Durandin. Together, they develop behavioural objects and installations that implement material instability (Pop-up unicellulaire, 2006), as part of a broader design-fiction project (Dakar, 3972, 2017). The process of transformation of matter and the observation of simple physical phenomena also characterize some of Matthieu Kavyrchine's pieces in the form of sculptures sensitive to their environment (Stalactite[Gouffres], 2011; Protonexpon, 2005).

The particularity of his artistic approach lies in a project-based approach, where photography takes the main place, complemented by other forms of expression(video, sound, installation, objects...). By the means used, the photographic recording reminds us of film production: spotting, teamwork, lighting, camera shots, post-production. But, unless we are talking about an invisible scenario, the reference stops there, because, cutting short any narrative proposal, these staging of mental spaces give way just before a fiction emerges. Thus, each of his photographs plunges us into a place that is not, literally, an "ou-topos", a territory out of reach, in suspense, imaginary, but potentially existing. 

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