In collaboration with HORS-CADRE Gallery and the French Institute in Kuwait, we’re pleased to present artists César Bardoux and Mathieu Merlet Briand for their first exhibition in Kuwait entitled Digital Flow.

​

Digital technologies are shaping the way we act and interact with our daily environment. In this era of ubiquitous digital flows and artificial intelligence fed by big datas, men have entered a new space of sensitivity. In the framework of an unique partnership between Contemporary Art Platform (CAP), the French Institute of Kuwait and HORS-CADRE gallery, “Digital Flow” showcases two emerging French artists who reveal, each in their own way, the influence of digital technologies on the perception of our contemporary reality.

​

Mathieu Merlet Briand continuously explores our relationship to the Internet, a relationship he describes as “an illusory matter” for we mostly ignore materiality of this cloud, its functionality, as well as its real impact on the environment. By using big datas as a medium and through the algorithms he develops, this digital native shapes data flows in order to create tangible materialisations. Abstractions, relics, crystallizations or fragments of the World Wide Web, his protean work gives body to digital ecosystems in the form of lenticular prints and sculptures, thus questioning the internet materiality while raising the issue of its environmental impact.

For this exhibition, Mathieu Merlet Briand presents a new project: “New Nature”. Inspired by our connected environment, this nervous system that, although artificial, now appears as “natural” and an integral part of our organic relationship to the world. His sculptures #Quartz and #DNA, shaped as rocks, tells us about these future durable data storage and translates a form crystallization of this digital memory. Mathieu Merlet Briand was also inspired by the natural environment of the Gulf with its infinite vision towards the sea or the desert, analogy to this ocean of information that the artists seeks to translate into his works. Through four series – “Environment”, “Dual World”, “New Memory” and “#Nature” – he materialises this new hybrid nature in which we live and synthesis's the challenges of the post-digital era.

​

Fascinated by water, as a fundamental source of life and for its symbolic power, César Bardoux explores this natural element under all its forms. If the starting point of his artistic research is the creation of Computer Generated Images, the artist leaves digital tools behind in favour of traditional techniques, such as oil painting and charcoal, when it comes to realization. In his work, new textures of hypermodernity collide: the fluidity of the digital, symbolised by water, overflows geometrical patterns that have the precision of the most technical optical instruments.

“Translucent Synthesis” is the continuum of this exploration that César Bardoux carries on through a diversity of media. In this new proposition, he presents his latest works, inspired by virtual reality and alchemy between matters. Whereas in his early paintings water was a canvas to explore materiality, the new paintings are based on the study of movement and dynamic. The aquatic substance also becomes clearer and clearer as César Bardoux pushes the boundary of oil paint and charcoal to achieve a mastery transparency.



“Digital Flow” therefore proposes a reflection on the impact of technologies on artistic processes and researches. On a wider scale, it also showcases a new sensitivity toward the nature and environment with, as a background, the ecological stakes of our present times.

— HORS-CADRE