aurèce vettier

aurèce vettier is an art project founded in 2019 by Paul Mouginot (b. 1990). This alias, formed using an algorithm, is a metaphor for the desire for a collaborative, open and hybrid approach.

This identity, like all of aurèce vettier’s work, allows for a lot of back and forth between the «real» space in which it is possible to exist, to draw, paint, sculpt, break, erase; and the «data» space, where it is possible to play with more dimensions than a human can grasp - a gesture analogous to uploading and then downloading an image over and over again on an online platform.

In this virtual space, which may involve AI algorithms or heavy mathematical processing, aurèce vettier explores new forms, which are then deployed as tangible objects, in close connection with many crafts.

The approach is not to consider the machine-generated elements as a set of finished works, but rather as raw material expanding conceptual possibilities and complementing the initial knowledge of art history.

Poetry is the backbone of aurèce vettier’s entire practice, whose first work was to publish a book of poetry in collaboration with a machine. Without ever replacing the artist, the algorithms thus served as a camp aid, generating raw material that was subsequently assembled by hand.

Continuing a research begun in the 1950s by the first artists to use generative approaches, aurèce vettier has observed that the more sophisticated technologies become, the more fragile the works they engender.

This specific and haunting gesture, this perpetual journey between the real and the virtual world, is now deployed in many territories in a minimal gesture. Thus, the Potential Herbariums series is made up of oil paintings, bronze sculptures or digital works representing impossible forms of plants dreamed up by artificial intelligences, which could have been found on the slopes of Mount Analogue, the mythical mountain of René Daumal’s unfinished work.