Fall 2014 in Paris/2.
Creativity Vs. VIP mainstream
Marcigny, a small town of Burgundy hosts a non-profit ambitious art center, and Art Elysées offered them a good space in the Parisien scene. Art still resists to commercial and VIP domination.
Last revised on 10/27/2014. Still subject to edition and revision.
The good news come from Art Elysées, the bad ones from Fiac and IYA with Slick-Attitudesin the between. Show-off/Variation, with limited budgets, and a smaller floor space, explores new orientations (biological, tablets). Contrasting with the overtly "VIP" centered and no-nonsesed Fiac, Art Elysées and Variation let space to non-profit motivations and creativity. Technically, prints tend to replace the full generative/interactive works.
See our general presentaition of the French digital art stage on this 2014 Fall. And to feel the evolution over precedent years, see our last synthetic post for 2013, and our post for 2012.
We focus here on a factual presentation of the shows, artists and works, and will try deeper wider and more critital comments later.
Art Elysées and Design Elysées
Alain Le Boucher on Lélia Mordoch stand was quite alone last year to represnet digital art. Miguel Chevalier is now present also on this gallery, presenting Meta-Cities (2012) and Body Voxel (2014). And they think about some collaborative word. Good news for everybody.
MFC-Michèle Didier: Artists books, the last bastion of digital art at Fiac!
Quite astonishing in such a commecial environment, a large space was devoted to a non profit provincial institution, the Frank Popper Contemporary Art Center (Centre d'art contemporain Frank Popper), with facilities in the small Burgundy town of Marcigny. The stand presented many works from the Center collections.
Kinetic and not digital, but near to generative art, the rotating works of Manuel Merida (on Meyer-Zafra space).
On the other hand, we saw no digital nor kinetic arts in Design Elysées, where some funny works were presented last year.
Fiac and Fiac (Off)icielle
That's the really bad news. Galerie Denise René is missing. The only one stand showing digital works is MFC-Michèle Didier, with artists books. We are here on the borders of digital art, but this resistance of a medium threatened by Internet is worth to be noted, and so more so as several artists. Two of them are digital enough to be present in diccan arpresented: Clause Closky and Alan McCollum. The orhter ones, Robert Garry, Yona Friedman, On Kawara, Chrristian Marclay, Allen Ruppersberg and Untel being more like object designers or typewriter artists.
Nicolaiev: Cry me a river. Art as a gold case for money...
Still on the borders of digital, note also Gupta Shilpa and his work 00.01 Flapboard.
Not at all digital, but talking about digits, and with humour : Stefan Nikolaiev, Cry me a river (2009) Michel Rein Gallery.
Attitude (ex. Slick)
Galerie Charlot is nearly the only one gallery to show digital art, but with a large stand and several artists: Sommer&Mignonneau... We have been seduced by the last works of Perconte, with new pastel palettes for his Ardèche prints from the generative work Nuages en Ardèche. This gallery has played a pioneering role in pushing their artists to offer prints rather than full scale computer works. With some success, and quite high prices.
LKFF Gallery showed a reduced, more portable version of Les mécaniques discursives, by Penelle & Jacquet.
Yia
Nothing digital this year, in spite of a wider and better located space (Carreau des Halles).
Variation (ex Show Off)
Variation at Blancs-Manteaux. A challenging volume, cleverly used. On the foreground, live show by Orlan.
The space at Blancs-Manteaux was smaller than in 2013 at Espace Cardin, but with an impressive architecture, a challenging volume brillantly landscaped.
The team of curators (Vanessa Quang, Anne-Cécile Worms and Dominique Moulon) have done a great job to break new ground and give place to new artists as well as to (really) new media:
- The work are mostly new or recent, by experienced and famed artists as well as by newcomers and even students.
- Tablets and smartphone grow in importance, as attested by the Orlan's presentation at the entrance.
- Kinetics are of less importance than last year, but on the other hand...
- ... many prints (on paper or other matters) are hung, be they works directly done for this medium, or shots from videos or generative works (we shall comment later on this point. Notably : France Cadet, Ikam & Fieri, Anne-Sarah Le Meur, Jacques Perconte.
The artists and their works at Variation
Yacine Ait Kaci.
>
Elyx. Digital Street Art (2011-2014). Art witt cell phones.
Memo Akten.
> Reductible complexity (2012). Generative art.
> Waves #1. (2014) Print.
Orlan,the prime star of Variation 2014. She combines bio-art (many implants in her body) and web art, with this year tablet application with augmented reality. We take this image from France Culture website. Her live show at variation was very difficult to capture.
Kohira Atsunobu
> Harmonie des quatre constellations (2014) Video and prints.
Aurélien Bambagioni.
> Combeback (2010, in progress). On tablet.
Stéphan Barron
> Daedalean Labyrinth (2014). This cubic labyrinth is formed by stacking 25 QR codes tracing the path of Leopold Bloom, hero of James Joyce's Ulysses through the streets of Dublin. This art project is related to Stéphan Barron's Earth Art and Technoromanticism. It is also following his QR artworks specially White QR on white.
Pascal Bauer.
> Petit marcheur (2009). Kinetics + screen.
Cecile Beau et Nicolas Montgermon.
> Cosmogonie (2012) Installation. ... a heap of ashes, with a moving center, quite like an extinct fire or vulcano.
B. Bellabas
> Driviing Hyperreality (2014). Digital manipulations of images.
Maurice Benayoun (Moben)
> White Cube (2014c.) A set of perfumes.
> Political Shift (2012-2014). On a tablet.
Moben: Perfumes. Bio-art. How far digital?
Samuel Bianchini.
> All Over (2009-2014). Work on a tablet.
Laurent Bolognini
> Electra 2 (2010). Kinetic and ligh arts. Bright lights at the end of rotating beams create forms using relinal remanency.
Marie-Julie Bourgeois.
> 21121221. (2012). Composition wih prints.
Emilkie Brout et Maxime Marion
> Bliss (la colline verdoyante) (2014). A kind of autostereoscopic image, from several Windows home sceen. When you move, you see different images.
> Le tour du monde en instantané (2012-2013). Series of photographs.
François Brument et Sonia Laugier
> Eclipse (2014). Installation. A central plate is surrounded by reliefs lighted by 120 LED's, controlled by the hand upon the central plat.
France Cadet. Robot my love. Cadet is one of the few artists to offer a positive view of human-robot coevolution. (Photo Alain Longuet).
France Cadet
> Robot Mon Amour (2013). Video.
> Cyborg #11, Cyborg #12, Cyborg #9 . Prints.
Elisabeth Caravella.
> How To (2014) . A mock tutorial about 3D software, a very original work of art. Pperhaps a little too long, but one of the most original works of this show.
Caroline Delieutraz.
> Only God can Judge me (2014). She has created a font with tattooed letters gathered on the web. They you caln use it to write what uou like on her website (operational ?).
Reynald Drouhin
> Driving hyperreality. (2014). Modified photo.
Ait Al Kaci showing (somehow) the making-of for his round the world pictures with sketchbook. No technical sophiscication, but the idea pleases.
Benjamin Gaulon.
Kindleglitch (2012) . Printed pictures of tablets.
Mihal Grecu
> We'll Become Oil (2011). Video.
Emmanuel Guez
> NBIA. (2014) No Budget Internet Art. Conceptual art. NBIA is an ephemeral group formed by Annie Abrahams, Pascale Barret, Christophe Bruno, Emilie Gervais and Emmanuel Guez).
Lyes Hammadouche.
> 60 v'2 (2011). Installation (clocks)
HeHe
> Planète Laboratoire, la planète malade (2012)
Guillaume Herbaut
> Iran Twitter Revolution (2009)
Norbert Hillaire: The meaning must get our of the contrast. (Quite conceptual art, we think). Photo Alain Longuet.
Norbert Hillaire. Combination of photographic pictures
> Storyboard 2014
> Untitled (2014)
Catherine Ikam et Louis Fleri
> Faces (2014) Interactive installation.
> Portrait Particles 1 et 2 (2014 c.), prints.
Olga Kisseleva
> Time Value (2012). Mathematical work, with text corresponding to the times in different world locations.
Ianis Lallemand
> Dépli (I, II, III) (2013). Laser etchings. Drawings from a hijacked architecture software.
Anne-Sarah Le Meur.
>
Sompteur 58, Limpe 01, Extra Terre 47 (2014). Prints from her generative software.
Juan Le Pac
> Fragile (2011). Series: Hong-Kong, Monuments aux morts, L'histoire du samouraï chinois.
Eva Magyarosi.
> Lema (2009). Complex compositions.
Damien Marchal
> L'inquiétude de la raison (2013)
Albertine Meunier: VAriation for 7 angelinos.
Albertine Meunier
> Variation for 7 angelinos (2014c.). Sort of lamps, reacting to presence.
Pia Myrvold.
> CubeWave (2014) Multimedia.
NBIA. See Guez above.
Nonotak
> Mask (2014)
Orlan.
> Scan Streap Tease (2013). Video
> Live show of augmented reality with cell phones ad the
Augment software. She juggles with masks.
Jacques Perconte
> Alpi Dicembre (2014). Generative video and prints.
Matt Pyke, The walking city. In spite of its very light keys, this work had the largest attentive public in Variation.
Matt Pyke
> The Walking City (2014) Generative video.
Baptiste Rabichon.
> Galaxy (2014). Image of a dirty scanner plate.
> Chirales (2014). Direct hand painting on a scanner plate.
Etienne Rey.
> Virtuality 12'' (2014). Kaleidoscopic mirrors.
> Elasticicity (2014c.), Installation with various objects.
Felique Ruiz-Sanchez.
> D.W. 1. Chaos (smoke). Video.
Samuel Saint-Aubin.
> Parcours défini (2013). Revolving plates with balls.
Scenocosme: Echo. From wood grain to music.
Scenocosme.
> Echos (2011). A section of a tree trunk, carved and used to generate music. Nature and machine hybridation. .
Flavien Thery .
> Dual 2014). "Fed Installation"...
> Parallèles (2013). Interaction of liquid cryst matrices.
Yann Toma.
> The restitutions. (2014). Somaflux. Effects with lights in empty rooms, with glass tubes and gaz pressure.
François Zajega
> Tumbleweed (2014). Laser etchings.
DICCAN'S PARTNERS:
Paris ACM Siggraph, the French chapter of ACM Siggraph, worldwide non-profit organization of computer graphics.
