In/Out – Artificial Paradises 2017, installation in Domaine de Chaumont-sur-Loire – France
Miguel Chevalier is a French digital artist known internationally as one of the pioneers of digital and virtual art.
He was born in Mexico City in 1959. Since 1985, he has been based in Paris, where he does most of his work.
He graduated from the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux Arts in Paris in 1980 and went on to Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs. After graduating in 1983, he was awarded the Lavoisier scholarship by the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs and studied at the Pratt Institute, New York. In 1994, he served as artist in residence at the Kujoyama Villa, Kyoto, Japan.
Miguel Chevalier’s wide-ranging artistic vision has been shaped by a broad education and extensive travel. Since 1982, his art has been dedicated to the exploration of technology. Taking references from the history of art and reformulating them using computer tools, his works investigate the flux and networks that underlie contemporary society. He is known internationally as one of the pioneers of virtual and digital art. His images are a rich source of insights into ourselves and our relationship to the world.
Chevalier’s work is complex and multidisciplinary.
IN/OUT – Artificial Paradises is an exclusive multi sensory work of art / installation by Miguel Chevalier for the park in Domaine de Chaumont-sur-Loire and is accompanied by Jacopo Baboni Schilingi original and generative music.
Half elliptical architecture is made out of wood covered by holographic films sheens under the sun like a giant 12m/39ft of diameter beetle. According to the light the architecture embraces all the colors of the light spectrum and attracts visitors.
The public is welcomed into the geodesic dome where he discovers in a second 8m/26.24ft of diameter dome a digital garden projected at 360°. The public leaves reality and enjoys this unique immersion experience where all the senses are awakened. The virtual garden explores in a poetic way the question about the link between nature and artifice.
His previous work was in 2016 on the Nuit Blanche/White Nights in Paris. Inside the 16th century Saint-Eustache church in Paris, Miguel Chevalier has realized a generative virtual-reality installation that interacts with the dramatic gothic architecture of the site. ‘voûtes célestes’ (heavenly vaults) that has been projected into the church’s chancel vaults, central nave, and cross-shaped transepts, making the volumes of the columns and ribbed vaults engage in a dynamic choreography before the eyes of the visitors.
His “Magic Carpets 2014’ is an interactive light display spread out across the floor of the former Sacré Coeur church in Casablanca Morocco. Covering it with a huge layer of light, the work references the world of biology, microorganisms, and cellular automata – as cells have the ability to multiply in abundance, divide and merge at different paces. Pieces come together, fall apart and transform in shape at rapid speeds. The displayed organic universe mingles with a digital construction of overlapping pixels.
A monograph of his works from 1985 to 2000 has been published in France by Flammarion, and features essays and interviews by Pierre Restany, Laurence Bertrand Dorléac and Patrick Imbard. The monograph is accompanied by a CD-Rom made with Christine Buci-Glucksmann of his video and virtual reality installations.
His exhibition in 2014 named “L’origine du Monde” named from the famous painting by Gustave Courbet was at the beautiful Grand Palais in Paris in 2014. L’origine du Monde was a projection on the walls of Grand Palais. It covered the facade of the Grand Palais with a skin of pixels. This new monumental creation on the urban scale is inspired by biology, micro-organisms and cellular automata. Cells multiply in abundance, divide, merge, and proliferate in a rhythm sometimes slow, sometimes fast. All aggregates, disintegrates, and deforms at an infinite speed.
Chevalier currently lives and works in Paris
Yvana Samandova
