Le Boucher, Detail: Example of complex sculpture made of operational components, including microcontrollers. (Our apologies for the poor quality of the picture, due to a difficult object in a difficult environment).
Digital art in Paris, Oct. 24-28
During four days (five for Art Elysées), Paris hosted seven art fairs. In nearly all of them you could see some digital art works and meet the artists. Find here a list, hopefully complete, including some kinetic & light works, which bridge the divide between digital and pre-digital. We shall later propose a synthetic analysis of this Parisian art Fall, including the Show-Off (Oct. 21-23).
- The most beautiful (Dare I?): Alain Le Boucher at Art Elysées.
- The most surprising: Constant Dullaart at Loft Sévigné
- The most sentimental: Eric Vernhes clock, on Galerie Charlot's stand à Slick.
- The cutest (not very digital, but so cool): The self portrait drawing rabbit of Tim Lewis, at Cutlog.
- The nearest to "the World of Art" : Galerie Denise René at Fiac.
- No digital art at Chifra (China-France).
Peter Keen... in case you find no socket...
Art Elysées and Art Design
Alain Le Boucher, on the Lélia Mordoch stand, shows his last LED creations. Evermore sophisticated. He stays firm on his principle of not hiding anything of the electronic components and integrated circuits. With the growing complexity of his works, that takes him to complex 3D soldering which become a sort of art by itself.
Still à Art Elysées, he shows some simpler works at Olivier Waltman Gallery.
Funny clocks at Cutlog.
Peter Keene, at Galerie Grizot, is another example of kinetic art, not so far from digital. He combines video screens with lights and motors in humorous and sometimes moving contraptions.
Cutlog
More fun than digital, this combination of "clocks" to form a global image.
Tim Lewis: even radical amateurs of digital art will have soft feelings for his rabbit.
The kinetic art of Tim Lewis is quite vintage. A combination of Tinguely and Jaquet-Droz. It is surprising to see artists practicing this sort of old mechanics in the 21th century. But these works are really seductive (for example the Indelible wheel drawing a heart, and/or cute, as this rabbit drawing a portrait.
FIAC
We hoped for more digital work in this edition of Fiac. Galerie Denise René sauve l'honneur, with his regular set of digital artists. Some of them are veterans like Agam, but they have continued to create from several decades, and are presently active. Two of his recent works, using touch screens, are presented this year:
- Au-delà de l'image invisible dans le temps (2013)
- Les deux carrés, diptyque sonore (2013).
Crespin. A moving sculpture with suspended light blue frames. So light that the camera does not captures the hanging wires... nor or course the movements, though they play a major part in Crespin's art.
Both are quite simplistic, and would be more appropriately sent as apps on tablets than as properly works of art. But amateurs will at least appreciate the aesthetic touch of a great signature.
Also at Denise René's, more in the wind, a moving sculpture by Elias Crespin, and the last work of Santiago Torres, a young generative artist. He makes constant progress, and this time has added some kind of texture into his programming.
Santiago Torres: Trame en temps réel (2013). constant progress on his track of generative forms, this time with texture effects.
Due to the mirroring quality of the sreen, vertically held in a brighty lit environment, you can even see yourself associated to the work when you take a picture. Some artists would not hesitate to invoke interaction if not tranmedia!
Slick
Mecaniques discursives.
A new name here, the Korean Unzi Kim, with a sort of mysterious box formed by large video, with feminine forms inside. Rather like in a shower cabin. But nothing properly erotic, unless you are very very slow yourself.
At Charlot's stand, works by Eric Vernhes (The Grandma's clock), Zajega and Antoine Schmitt, who shows Doop++, a polygonal variant of his generative works, this time in cooperation with Patrice Belin. You can also see Schmitt's works at the gallery itself (rue Charlot, Paris 3e), where he exposes until Nov. 23. His last work : 666, doing again with the idea of pixels playing with pebbles.
Antoine Schmitt: 666. Pixels playing with pebbles.
LKFF shows a version of Mécaniques Discursives, by F. Penelle and Y. Jacquet.
YIA (Young International Artists)
The most important presentation is, at Loft Sévigné, The revolving Internet, by Constant Dullaart, hacker even more than artist. A lot more on this artist on his XPO Gallery page.
Dullaart: hacking Google! (a screen capture)
DICCAN'S PARTNERS:
Paris ACM Siggraph, the French chapter of ACM Siggraph, worldwide non-profit organization of computer graphics.
Les Algoristes, an association of artists using their own algorithms in their work.
