Jeudi 13 mars – Dimanche 30 mars
FONDATION
Nicolas Tourte
Room Gilbert-Gaillard, 2 rue Saint Pierre
Opening hours:
Tuesday to Saturday, 1pm to 7pm
Sunday from 2pm to 6pm
Free access
This post is also available in: Français (French)
The work:
Ice is no longer eternal. The ice of mountain glaciers all over the world is disappearing visibly, just like that of ice floes. On the one hand, scientists are alarmed by the melting of the ice and warn of the harmful consequences that will come very quickly, on the other, governments and companies are opening new exploitation routes, new trade routes through the ice floes, and the North Pole is once again the subject of high-tension geostrategic issues. While we see a world disappearing, the melting of the ice is not without deleterious effects on ecosystems, we are already rushing to conquer its ruins…
We also know the preponderant role that ice floes play on climate balances, in particular on ocean circulation. The reduction of its vast icy tongues will undoubtedly bring its share of disasters that will be added to those in progress..
Everything happens as if our societies, launched into a frantic race for profits and abundance for a few and exploitation and servitude for a large majority, had, probably unconsciously, decided on their ends, their erasures, their disappearances. Thus the foundations on which they rest seem to disintegrate. They melt like snow in the sun.
I also think of Isaac Asimov’s science fiction novel: FOUNDATION. I can’t help but hope that a science, like that of psychohistory, which predicted in the work the fall of the Empire with 25 million inhabited worlds, and which could reduce by its predictions the long period of barbarism that would inevitably follow, estimated at 30,000 years to only 1000 years, by grouping together all the knowledge and knowledge of humanity, could get us out of the impasse in which we are locked.
This is a childhood dream, it goes without saying. I enjoy here confronting his reveries with the harshness of a reality where the representations of the disaster in progress would be advertising, as if they were trying to sell us at the same time a dream world and its brutal end. I imagine the context of this work as if it were installed in a cave, or a cavern. As if she were referring to the staging of Plato’s allegory of the cave. How to base an epistemological reflection on the origins of knowledge and how to make the most of it – that of a humanity freed from its Hybris.
The artist:
Nicolas Tourte was born in Charleville-Mézières, he lives in Lille and works everywhere.
Associated artist _ Group A Cultural cooperative
After studying at the ESAD in Valenciennes, he focused on the notion of cycle and maintains a strong link
with architecture. The life sciences guide him in his research, he questions with humor and derision the place of man in the universe. In the digital age he oscillates between zero and one.
In this in-between, this interstice, he rejoices in his inventive finds.
Artiste’s website: https://www.nicolastourte.net/
ARTIST'S PORTrAIT:
MORE INFORMATIONS...
Interview by Fanny Bauguil (VIDEOFORMES relay teacher)
- How would you describe this installation? What do we see? What do we hear? What do we do?
A fallen advertising sign, melting like snow in the sun, conceived as a contemplation of disaster. Letters inscribed with the word foundation, the whole seeming to melt. Faint dripping noises, a certain resonance. We look, turn, perhaps to catch our reflection.
- What is it all about?
Of a changing world, an obsolete way of life, the allegory of the cave, ecology, threats both perceptible and abstract. A climax.
- Is this the first time this installation has been presented to the public?
This is the second time, the first being at the Pont du Gard. Can you tell us a little about the process involved in creating this work? A video made in 2008 was the prelude to this installation. A few sketches, a 3d simulation, research into a form of apogee, a few VR tests.
- Which artists (in all fields) or, more generally, which art forms have inspired your creative process, and what references, if any, do you allude to in this installation?
David LYNCH and David CRONENBERG heightened my long-standing curiosity about the organic medium. I’d always been attracted by the “pasteboard” and “do-it-yourself” side of animated films. At the Beaux-Arts, my discovery of video artists such as Pierrick SORIN and Michel GONDRY was fundamental. In a more exacerbated vein, the videos of Bill Viola and the scenic unfolding of Mattew BARNEY played an important role in the way I approached my work. As well as drinking in science fiction (Philip K.DICK, Isaac ASIMOV ), books such as Jérémi NARBY’s “The Cosmic Serpent” have stimulated my interest in esoteric speculation. In recent years, I’ve taken an interest in both digital artists and sculptors who navigate between carpentry and CNC manufacturing processes.
- What are the difficulties, constraints, challenges… encountered during its development?
Maintaining a watertight seal, finding the right projection angles to obtain a good video envelope for the lettering and at the same time projecting a reflection of the contours onto a wall.
- Can you give us one or more web addresses where we can see your work?
Site web : www.nicolastourte.net
Instagram : @nicolastourte_art
- A few keywords that would fit in well with your installation?
Foundation, mirror, reflection, melting ice, cycle, puddle, disaster.
- * A few words about your artistic career?
A path strewn with pitfalls, where each problem leads to a rethinking of processes and influences a way of thinking and a mode of production.
- When did you first become interested in digital art?
I started in 2000, when I saw a way out towards something intangible..
- Can you make a living from your creative activity?
Yes, since 2010.