ARTISTIC APPROACH
Introduction​
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My artistic approach walks through the twists and turns of the Anthropocene. It was in 2020 that I became aware of it.
Since the mid-2000s, I have represented, in spite of myself, through series of paintings that are both gentle and threatening, different aspects of this geological period that crosses our time.
The Anthropocene is characterized by the advent of humans as the main force of change on Earth, overriding natural geophysical forces. It is the era of modeling, artificialization and pollution of the world by humans.
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On the question of the themes addressed in my work since 2005, I have treated in painting different facets of the Anthropocene ranging from globalization to transhumanism through technological and digital sciences, without forgetting urbanization, the clash of cultures and mass consumption.
But in 2021 I am changing course, going against the current of the Anthropocene phenomenon to reverse the horizon and open my palette to rewilding, towards a renewed communion with nature.
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From a pictorial point of view, my paintings are colorful, the contrast is significant in the colors but also the shapes and lines, my line is precise and structured. The colors are bright and vibrant.
In my universe imbued with vitality and virtuality, portraits occupy an important place, in particular those of women; figures sometimes historical, sometimes imaginary, even cyborgs, thus colonize my linen canvases.
The formats are large, the shots often tight.
The pixel, lines and colored dots are the main pictorial markers of this general idea of artifice that I show in my paintings.
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If we take a conceptual look at my work, I would say that my work is part of a form of Virtual Figuration which offers multiple representations of reality as it could happen (not as it could have been or as it appears to be today). Somewhere between reality and science fiction, in the narration of technologically possible scenarios.
My last two series follow each other chronologically and reflect the logical evolution of my work; the HUMAN RACE series shows an evolution of humans towards transhumanism, (the artificialization of humans, their body and their mind) and the HUMAN NATURE series, on the contrary, offers a return to nature, a new communion with the living. Two possibilities of extreme and opposite commitments.
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1- Globalization, urbanization, clash of cultures
The series Past to the future, the spectrum of traditions in globalization;
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From 1997 to 2004, I worked as a brand manager in marketing for the eyewear industry. I traveled a lot thanks to my professional activity and I became aware of the geopolitical, social and intercultural issues that were at stake in this era of galloping globalization. Then I left to live abroad in 2004, and that's where I really immersed myself in interculturalism, as a Frenchwoman living in Hungary.
This period gave birth to my series entitled “Past to the future, the spectrum of traditions in globalization”. The 6 paintings and the only sculpture in this series, depict real or imaginary characters in unlikely places where their relationship to time has disappeared, questioning our relationship to cultures and their traditions in a world that has become global. This work was exhibited at the French Institute in Budapest in 2011 during a collective exhibition of the Quatu'Art group of which I was a member.
2- Consumer goods, technological and digital sciences,
pixels and big data
The series “Portraits of Andy”, “Avatar, the transfer”, “Data driven”
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The digital era began to fascinate me from the years 2007/2008, when I became aware of how new technologies were about to transform our world. This is where I looked for a pictorial signature that could represent this digital universe in image. I then marked my paintings with a new type of fingerprint: the pixel.
It quickly became obvious to me that these color squares, of which the images are made, could represent a logical continuation of the pointillist and impressionist artistic currents in painting.
This is how I experimented with this work on portraits of Nicole Kidman first then by taking up the emblematic figures of Andy Warhol like Marilyn, Lisa Mineli, Jacky Kennedy...
I had the feeling that there was something Neo-Pop in the pixel, it allowed a new graphic explosion and marked a step towards the mass consumption of images.
What interested me above all at that time in artistic creation was the search for innovation, creation, concepts, ideas, messages... to seize computer codes to transpose them on the canvas seemed like an interesting and innovative idea in traditional painting.
In 2010, I mixed the pixel with more figurative paintings, like in my series “Avatar, the transfer” where the portraits are only half pixelated. I'm starting to want to show that the digital encroaches on the human, that it becomes more invasive, as if intrinsic, and that it is no longer a simple representation of reality; there and now there is a kind of marriage, a union between artifice and nature, machine and man.
This is for me a first awareness of the imminent arrival of another chapter in our history, that of transhumanism, to which I return in 2019.
For a long time I believed that I should keep this imprint of the pixel to be easily recognizable, identifiable as an artist who has her mark. But I quickly understood that this pixel was in danger of becoming like a thread in the paw, today too frozen, immobile, far too far from this idea of rhythm and digital speed which energizes me as much as it paralyzes me.
Then comes the BIG DATA period. The Data driven series will deal with the issue of a data-driven society. I took a close interest, during the years 2017-2018, in the world of digital start-ups and data processing, the field of Data sciences.
This new world, in which we are immersed, inspired me to work imbued with this alienating and sprawling phenomenon, in which I play with the codes of the aesthetics of contemporary computer graphics (in the sense of graphic information).
My pictorial signature for this series of paintings is also nourished by the great masters of Art Deco and the specificities of Art Nouveau, which I discovered during my years of living in Budapest and my visits to Vienna. I appropriate the colors of Klimt, while using much more geometric decors from the codes of contemporary computer graphics. I play at mixing the decorative aspect (in the form) with the dramatic depth of the idea of data science (in the background).
In the painting Attraction, a reclining woman exposes herself to the immensity of digital technology. She gives, in all shamelessness her body and her soul to this new world. She seems to benefit for the moment from these positive and pleasant radiations which these artificial waves breathe into her. But what will happen?
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3- Restriction of wildlife areas
The Nature morte series
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It is a question here of animal species confronted with the modification, by man, of their natural environment. The paintings depict wild animals in spaces that have become artificial and hostile and thus raise the question of their survival.
The contrast of colors creates a tension to which is added the pressure of the vertical lines which divide the landscape, deprive the animal of its freedom and announce the imminent arrival of the disappearance of their species.
4- The transhumanist conquest
The Human race series and its portraits of the year 2100
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After having shaped and artificialized the Earth, humans are now venturing into the artificialization of their own body (even their mind), driven by the cultural, intellectual and social movement of transhumanism.
The goal? Increase his physical and mental abilities, add technical, mechanical and bionic attributes, capable of transcending his natural abilities to survive on a planet that has become hostile, and perhaps even achieve eternal life.
It was at the end of 2019 that I started thinking about this theme as the next subject of my work. The first painting on the theme of transhumanism was going to be called Cassandre, there was a kind of urgency to produce it even if I was moving away from my current series, I had to do it at that time, in December 2019. Why such an urgency? Why Cassandra? I had read the excellent novelTransparency of Marc Dugain whose heroine is called Cassandra. Cassandra who, in Greek mythology, had powers of prediction. But as she refused Apollo, in revenge, she was cursed and no one ever believed her words again.
It turns out that in March 2020, in the light of the first confinement, the Cassandre painting took on its full meaning as the television news broadcast a photograph of the deserted Trocadero, the Eiffel Tower in the background, as a representation... of my painting!
Would I have predicted what would happen 3 months later with the arrival of the pandemic?
I had painted Cassandra alone on this square, as if coming from nowhere, stationed there in a deserted world. It was the world upside down. Was it reality representing fiction or fiction taking over reality?
The decor, the architecture, the absence of nature challenge us. We all know this place, this monument, the Eiffel Tower. But these characters are offbeat. It's as if we were in the future without being there or as if we were in the present, in the company of characters from the future. Trouble sets in, are they robots? Aliens maybe? Alienated, they seem to be inseparable, connected, even bionic.
In the series human race, I use the lines of bright colors on the bodies and faces to represent the electricity that runs through us, that we produce naturally and artificially. This energy has become indispensable, source of production, life and communication, source of development and increase. This electricity which pushes the human being to defile the Earth and to artificialize it always more.
And then come the portraits, framing refocused on the faces in close-ups, undoubtedly my favorite playground. These portraits of the year 2100 echo the portraits of my Avatar series, presented for the first time in 2010 in Budapest. Tight shots, fake faces, artificialized but this time without pixels. Gone are the pixels that marked the beginning of my digital period!
Here the faces are double, again. They are aligned, shifted, emptied, transparent, mutant, hybrid, bionic. These women's faces are metamorphosed to the rhythm of technological developments which already artificialize bodies and minds today.
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5- Towards a rewilding
The “Human Nature” series
In 2021, the rewilding makes its appearance in my life as a revelation. I then wanted to continue in the same style of artistic expression as my Human race series (with its portraits of the year 2100), but this time to vegetate the faces of my new characters.
They commune in a new way with nature, recharging their batteries there. It is the beginning of a whole new creative period.