Research




Context


Like many, I strongly believe that the times we live in, dominated by an exploitative, growth-based  and profit-oriented economic paradigm, call for an existential reassessment of where humanity as a whole is going. This feels at once urgent, abstract and impossible. Most of the concrete things we can do — voting, writing letters and petitions, changing our consumption habits, etc. — seem irrelevant in the face of the structural nature of the problem. Well, organizing helps. Protests are necessary. But language itself seems too indebted to economics to adequately formulate the questions we must address. If we want to reconsider the very idea of how things are organized on the most primary level, then what building blocks, what units, what metrics can we use that are not already the design of the existing organization? What are the poetics of change when it comes to structures, systems and economics?

I try to make works that translate at least some of these questions into something tangible.



About my work


Through my research and work, I explore the themes of social order transformation and paradigm shift. I'm interested in the relationship between the evolution of the values, beliefs, and principles that define our perception of reality and how this evolution translates concretely into the structural frameworks that govern our lives - the architecture of our homes, the political parties we vote for, the ads that suggest maternity clothes before you even know you’re pregnant. My practice is, in a way, an exploration of the gap between the evolution of concrete reality of our lives and that of the intangible infrastructure that underlies it, and how this relationship influences our interpretation of the past, our perception of the present, and our vision of the future.

My work takes the form of an ecosystem of works and projects, including mainly paintings and drawings, but also architectural installations, sculptures, performances, data visualizations, and interactive systems. I try to create works that give concrete, tangible form to speculative visions or premonitions. I articulate these visions with as rigorous a structural specificity as possible, while deploying a visual language that is often atmospheric and enveloping - encouraging one to approach the content gradually, in a contemplative or meditative state. I'm interested in the possibility of slowing down time through subtle perceptual experiences and creating the conditions necessary to tackle complex social issues such as the influence of quantitative logic on the myth of progress, or our individual existential anxieties about our collective future.

Painting and drawing, among others, allow me to approach such subjects through their quality of "primary" language, i.e. a language that does not depend on pre-established rules such as the alphabet, syntax, or the binary logic of the digital. I use these traditional media in such a way as to combine the flexibility and immediacy of their native qualities - color, material, surface - with certain referential or indexical elements such as text, diagram, symbol, or architecture. This allows me to relate, for example, the sharp, impersonal simplicity of a word written on the surface, such as "nation-state" (a sign pointing to an abstract concept), to a feeling I have when I think of this word, a feeling that is not rational or explainable, but which I can manage to translate through the irreducible complexity of an association of colors elaborated from 15 or 20 different pigments (an embodied, subjective and specific reality). Through my work, I try to make palpable this tension between shared language (information), and internalized language (meaning interpreted by lived experience).

Thus, certain formal characteristics of my work – among others, distinctive colors and mood - stem from this approach, from my intimacy with paint and color, but are also transposed to my practice as a whole. Many of my works and projects are conceived as dynamic components designed to interfere with the larger ideological, economic, or technological structures in which we live. These projects often function as interactive and functional mechanisms, such as economic systems (Vertically Integrated Socialism, 2015; The Time of the Work, 2016), focus groups (Built-In, 2019), polls (Existential Issues: A Mapping Exercise, 2019-2020) or a human embodiment of a grand language model (Les voix, 2023).
 


Side projects


Experiments with surveys and data visualization:
=> pluralism.xyz

A practical study of AI anthropomorphism: 
=> premonitions.ai