IN-MATERIAL

10/19/2023

This art fair is exhibiting our artists : Sabrina Ratté and Flavien Théry. The question of immateriality in art has never been more pressing than it is today. It could be argued that works of art have always emerged from the mind, as Leonardo da Vinci, who in his day considered them all «cosa mentale», already asserted. In the 1960s, when so many artists began to «calculate» their geometric abstractions, the concept began to shift from the human brain to that of the computer. Then, in the 1980s, Jean-François Lyotard and Thierry Chaput called their exhibition at the Centre Pompidou Les Immatériaux, a manifesto of postmodernity. The creative potential of electronics and computer technology is showcased in a transparent scenography of grids. The rest is history. More and more artists are hijacking the ubiquitous computer system, when they’re not collaborating with artificial intelligences, to upload their virtual creations to online platforms. What is relatively new is the interest shown by a new generation of collectors in the digital oddities that, in the field of art, so aptly testify to our society of the immaterial. Their desires oscillate between a dream of the virtual without limits and an attraction to pieces that participate in a form of re-materialization of the world in terms of digital manufacturing processes. The exhibition [ in ] material is all about hybridization, bringing together works with different coefficients of materiality. When the lack of materiality summons the sublime. Dominique Moulon