Artists in residence

INTERVIEW

A residency in Montmartre, at the Cité internationale des arts, how is it?

“In the evening, sometimes I look out my window and see the lights on in the other studios. It can be midnight, two hours, sometimes four. The residents are busy while the others are asleep. There is a very special emotion to feel this nocturnal proximity, these lives that are also acts and works that are done. Looking out the window, I feel like I’m looking at an islet, a bit like James Stewart in Window to Courtyard, which looks at all the stories that are possible in this little corner of the city.

In the Cité, we are in the city and out of the city. We meet the other residents, we discuss projects, upcoming exhibitions. We also often talk about the Cité itself, about how we should live here, together, about recycling and compost that we should finally install, about our huts.

I wonder what a city would be like without this type of insularity.”

What are your current projects?

“I am preparing an installation called Terre Seconde on artificial intelligence and extinction at the Palais de Tokyo as part of the Audi Talents, which will open on June 20.

I am also working on the deployment in Greater Paris and on the architectural scale of L’augmentation des villes in collaboration with designer Goliath Dyèvre and with the help of Icade.

I am currently developing a virtual reality installation with Ruedi Baur as part of a research project at ENSAD.

Then other projects, probably in New York, Gijón, Brussels, Taiwan.  

I am also writing a book between theory and fiction on artificial imagination that will close my research at the Ecole Normale Supérieure de Paris.”

BIOGRAPHY

After studying visual arts and philosophy at the Sorbonne, and then multimedia at ENSBA, Grégory Chatonsky developed a work around the Internet.

Technologies, and in particular the Internet, are an important source of inspiration for Gregory Chatonsky. Shaping the paradoxes of the network and the gaps between its technological and existential flows could summarize a research that spreads over several media: installation, video, photography, writing, drawing and sculpture. His works could evoke infinite spaces in which attention is fragmented. The network becomes a world in its itself where the boundaries between technology and the human being become blurred. His practice attempts to draw the outlines of a new imaginary whose invention would be technical and which could go as far as the extinction of the human being.

In 1994, Grégory Chatonsky founded “Incident.net”, one of the first Netart collectives in France. He has been a guest professor at Le Fresnoy (2004-2005), at UQAM (2007-2014), and is the recipient of an international research chair at the University of Paris VIII (2015). Since 2017, he has been an artist-researcher at the ENS Ulm and co-directs with Béatrice Joyeux-Purnel a research seminar on artificial imagination and post-digital aesthetics.

Born into a family of recognized artists in Raiatea (French Polynesia), Evrard CHAUSSOY has been naturally immersed in art since his birth. Growing up on his island, the artist developed a vision of the world that is his own and that he translates into his paintings with representative colors, worked light, marked by a family historical background to convey an important message.

During his residency, his painting moved away from the figurative towards a more conceptual and, above all, more committed form. Using an ancestral Polynesian technique, he ended up with a more contemporary freedom of gesture.

On canvas, Evrard explores the traditional methods of painting on sarongs, made from woodcuts, then altering, erasing or covering these prints, leaving only a trace. He reinterprets the forms of the early Polynesian arts, gradually deconstructing them to leave only the evidence of a past existence.

At the heart of his approach, the notion of culture is closely intertwined with that of nature. These notions are threatened by a constantly changing world. As a result, his creations are anchored in a temporality that is both past and present, inviting the observer to question their future and the role he or she can play in this ever-changing world.

Shilpa Chavan’s work is the culmination of the visual diaspora, where concepts and influences range from the desire to travel, memories and the need to push boundaries.  Her work is inspired by local influences and observations, where pieces from each collection use a variety of raw materials, merging ideas gathered through travel and multicultural interactions. Each experience, from the sensory to the subconscious, is made individually.
                                              

Using fashion as a basis, different media such as style, photography, hat making, videography and artistic installations are used to form a spectrum of collective design. Whatever the current concept, her work is intended to be a friend of science and love. This is done with a neoteric discernment, while maintaining a love for nostalgia and romanticism. Reinvent and therefore rediscover “The Age of Wonders”.