Michel Haillard defines himself as a creator of worlds. Woodworker, upholsterer, recycler, nature and animal lover, he honours the living being in each of his creations. Shaman, Animist, priest or diviner, man has celebrated the animal God since the dawn of time. Through his works, Michel invokes this interdependence with the wild.
His use of unique and striking animal parts is a celebration of animals and a protest against human dominance. These whimsical, challenging pieces show an unbridled imagination, a manifest nostalgia for pomp and irony.
Michel Haillard's universe is a journey to the heart of a primitive tribe, to the epicentre of a gemstone mine, to a punk music room or to the brain of a magician creating mysterious potions. Objects or sculptures, furniture or curiosities, each of the artist's works questions its origin and destination. The creator's dreams are crazy. He works with bronze, skins, horns, wood, stones, bones, horsehair, mottled objects... In his workshop, Michel Haillard is the flamboyant alchemist of Belleville and Folie Méricourt. He accumulates the most diverse materials, diverting them from their function to extract a piece of furniture, an ornament, an object that tends to become a singular sculpture.
The furniture with names evocative of a world without limits, "Karabosse" chests of drawers, "Platon" armchairs, "Perro" thrones, are made by assembling materials of the most disparate origins. He associates, combines and couples horns and skins (which have gone through customs and whose CITES permit guarantees their traceability), precious and semi-precious stones, bronze, glass and many other diverted elements. The artist is rediscovering the origins of Man, who is nothing if he does not respect his ecosystem.
The red thread in Michel Haillard's work is a precious universe tinged with humour. A cartoonist at the age of 20, the artist 40 years later still offers creations full of magic, fantasy and laughter. During his confinement, Michel has lost none of his inventiveness. He takes advantage of this forced retirement to create "Magic objects made in confinement" with all the resources accumulated in his workshop, a veritable Ali Baba's cave. On the verge of a trance, Michel builds up a collection of unique pieces from bells, napkin rings, toys, feathers, wild pig's teeth... From all these objects and materials, wizard's finery, "coiffed" headgear, masks, fairy lights and other prayer wheels were born, which the Prince of New York would display sitting on his vermilion alligator throne.
