Miguel Chevalier’s surprising digital gardens sparkle at the immersive Grand Palais

Long confined to the sphere of digital Art, exhibited mainly in Asia, South America and the Middle East, Miguel Chevalier attracted the attention of the French contemporary art world in 2014 with 3 generative virtual reality installations (Sur-Natures, Fractal Flowers, Trans-Nature) at the Domaine de Chaumont-sur-Loire art season. Three years later, the artist imagined in the estate park IN/OUT – Artificial paradisesinspired by the geodesic domes of Richard Buckminster Fuller, immersing the visitor in the heart of moving images of artificial plants projected at 360°, to the sound of spatial music by Jacopo Baboni-Schilingi. “A total work of art project”he asserted.

Digital germinations

A pioneer of digital art, this “digital gardener” has used computer language in the field of visual arts since 1978. The French artist born in 1959 in Mexico City now offers at the Matmut Contemporary Art Center, a journey into the heart of a reinvented nature, “Botanical Pixels” . Extra-Natural (2024), a monumental work in virtual reality, causes lush vegetation inspired by Mexican flora to arise, flourish and fade according to the movements of visitors. To this large generative and interactive fresco are added fractal flowers (Fractal Flowers2008-2024), a herbarium composed of 200 “virtual seeds” which randomly gives rise to geometric flowers bowing as the public passes by.

At the same time, Miguel Chevalier materializes these hybrid creations between plant, mineral, animal and robotic in the form of an installation of 12 sculptures in 3D printing (Beautiful Woman 1 > 12). “I was excited by the revolutionary potential of realizing some of my generative works into three-dimensional sculptures, transforming immateriality into materiality”confides Miguel Chevalier.

A virtual aesthetic

Established for twenty-five years in Ivry-sur-Seine in a workshop-laboratory of which he designed the facade (a red metal cube pierced with pixels called The factory), he also creates drawings made with robots, in line with the Plotters Drawings (plotter drawings) by digital art pioneer Vera Molnár. “Artists invariably appropriate the means of their time and become representative of it over time. I was inspired by artists such as Man Ray, who exploited the full potential of photography through his rayograms, thus elevating this medium to the status of an art in its own right. Nam June Paik also had a significant influence on my approach by opening new avenues in the field of video with his screen installations. My engagement in digital art is not an apology for this technology, but rather an exploration to show that I can develop a virtual aesthetic in its own right.he specifies.

Co-creation of the artist and the computer

Miguel Chevalier's work therefore takes its source from the history of art, notably the visual explorations of kinetic art, Op Art and Grav (Visual Art Research Group). It exploits recurring themes such as immateriality in art, the relationship between nature and artifice (Sur-Natures, Trans-Nature), the world of flows and networks (Complex Meshes, Cosmic Meshes), urban transformations and the architecture of cities (Meta-cities, Cyberspace-Data Landscapes).

Most of its installations are interactive: the images transform according to the visitor's movements. And they are generative: created in collaboration with computer scientists, they use algorithms borrowed, some of them from biology, which make it possible to create universes of artificial life, effects of growth, proliferation and disappearance, such as The Origin of the World (2012). “With this tailor-made software, I introduce precise parameters upstream (shapes, colors, size), but part of it is random. This allows you to create multiple compositions that only appear once. The work becomes a co-creation between the artist and the computer, evolving autonomously while remaining faithful to my initial vision. »

The integration of artificial intelligence into its creative process now opens up new perspectives and broadens its field of expression. At the immersive Grand Palais in Paris, it uses AI in its new installation, I.maginaires A.rtificiels, exploring the themes of surveillance, biometrics and facial recognition. “The work invites the viewer to reflect on the omnipresence of screens and surveillance technologies in our modern societies”he explains.