Nicolas Garner: Meta-Aesthetics

Nicolas Garner

Art Direction & Image-Making

16
Didu SS2020

Fashion — 09.2019

Fashion designer DIDU (Antwerp, BE) invited Nicolas Garner for collaborating on the design of 3 looks for her SS2020 collection. The hybridization of different techniques allowed the creation of a series of prints as a base material for the garments' design.
15
Blurred Vision of Nataliya

Digital Painting — 11.2018

Blurred Vision of Nataliya is the result of several digital techniques' hybridization. It explores the moving and fluid nature of memory. As an interpretation of retinal persistence, the piece questions the notion of visual impression processed by human brain, which is fallible and permeable to time and emotional subjectivity. The malleability of the digital image, as evidenced by the succession of transformations undergone by Blurred Vision of Nataliya, echoes the slow and random visual alteration of the mental projection of images, giving rise to this semi-abstract stealthy apparition, such as a pictorial reminiscence. Framed print on satin fabric, 135 x 92 cm
14
A Study in Incarnation

Installation — 11.2018

Produced thanks to the extraction of a 3D model's earthly body, A Study in Incarnation consists of a silicone piece transformed via UV printing and stretched by 8 cables. The installation presents the dissection 2.0 of a digital body, an attempt to study the existence of the virtual humanoid: the avatar. This profaned and desacralized body, quartered like an animal's skin hanging from meat hooks, is reduced to the state of object. Thus unwound, the face, which is the first and principal element of identification in humans, seems to become the mask of its own identity. A Study in Incarnation returns its materiality to the body while taking away its life. The avatar, virtual alter-ego, then amputated from all consubstantiality, freed from all alienation, is no more than a disembodied generic body. UV Print on silicone, with eyelets and cables, 70 x 43 cm
13
Hydra

3D visual — 09.2018

Hydra is a 3D visual commissioned by foundry Production Type (Paris, FR) for a printed type specimen. Inspired by the idea of fluidity, the series of abstractions turns into a unique semi-figurative image depending on how you read the specimen.
12
Algorithmic Beauty

Visual series — 06.2018

Algorithmic Beauty is a commissioned work for The Future Laboratory (London, UK). The series of visuals explores the rise of new and forthcoming trends and phenomenons in the beauty industry such as injectables, snapchat dysmorphia or at-home technologies.
11
Genesis 1:27

Installation & Video — 06.2017

Genesis 1:27 questions the digital representation of the body and the concept
of avatar, alternative version of the self, through the metaphor of birth and by extension, of the Creation. Mixing different issues such as life, religion
and capitalism, the installation immerses the viewer to the very core of human existence, within the material hyperreality of the body, creating confusion about the reality of the avatar, reality of the digitally-constructed image and reality of the divine. The work highlights the promotion of human life as a commodity in the age of late capitalism, and the irruption of economy into the last stronghold that was resisting so far which is human life. The choice of confronting a commercial aesthetic to mystical or religious references highlights the cynicism of this situation. Coming alive thanks to 3D animation and motion capture technologies, the artist was able to embody his own alter ego.
10
Omega Series

Multiple — 02.2017

ΩSERIES is a limited-edition multiple gathering artists and designers’ pieces commissioned for each issue. This #0 is based on the interpretation of the keyword MORPH. It features a series of 3 graphic visuals, 1 essay, 1 photo poster, 1 photo card, 1 audio K7 (overview here) and 1 3D print, all clasped together into a black latex enveloppe. The contributors for this release were: Maria Guta, M-O-R-S-E, Emma Panchot and Nicolas Garner.
09
Dystopia

Visual pieces — 12.2016

'Dystopia' is a triptych of visuals (presented on light boxes) resulting from the exploration of the virtual environment. Indeed, the artist wandered into different video games and captured images of the edges of the space or of imperfections of this entirely set up world. Distorted shapes, pixelated stretched out surfaces and battered structures highlight its falseness. The images feel like from the origin of Earth, like a return to the Creation, due to the absence of any living presence. It depicts a minimal world looking like made out of paper cuts, a dystopian vision of a desert earth where the time seems suspended.
08
Berlin

Book — 12.2016
With Taiyo Onorato & MAAD

This is the result of one week in Berlin with Taiyo Onorato (of Taiyo Onorato & Nico Krebs) and MAAD students. The main subject is the architecture of the city, from landmarks to anonymous constructions. The buildings should be approached from a level of abstraction, and result in an interpretation rather than a documentation. Selected pictures are gathered in a collector’s edition printed and bound directly at the Helmut Newton Foundation during the C/O Berlin Book Days. The cover concrete-like visuals are done manually with silicone material, and paintbrush touches are added on the pages which make every copy unique.
07
Hyperreality

Installation — 12.2017

'Hyperreality' is a mirror of our staged and improved self online. Hyper-individualism and religion of ego promoted by our modern show-societies with social networks, tend to create a second version of each one of us: a virtual one. Anyone can now build their own virtual identity, somehow giving birth to oneself again (remember this Second Life online platform?). Cult of the body, cult of the performance and self-improvement are all related to this questioning. The project is meant to confuse the audience by staging unreality using photorealistic 3d features to present what is usually the most authentic situation: intimacy and nudity.
06
Reset

Visual series — 07.2016

'Reset' explores failures and bugs in video games. Staging unnatural poses and distorsion / collision between body and space, the visuals question the realness of computer-generated-images and and how trustworthy they are in the context of our post-photographic era.
05
Synthetic Skin

Photograph series — 02.2016

Synthetic skin explores the interpretation of human body by technology: the post-organic body. Using photography as a basis and a 3D-facial recognition app (diverted from its usual aim), the positions, face expressions and lights were editable artificially, as a sort of malleable material. The work also investigates the uncanny valley, a concept according to which, humans feel a revulsion towards objects or robots that look and move almost but not exactly, like a natural being. Indeed, it is hard to distinguish if the models in the images are real humans or not.
04
Against Translation by Kenneth Goldsmith

Book — 09.2015
With groupe CCC

Against Translation is an unreleased essay by Kenneth Goldsmith. Published
by Jean Boîte Éditions in eight languages, presented in a boxset which consists of eight books – English, French, Spanish, German, Chinese, Japanese, Russian and Arabic. The author discusses the impasses and shortcomings
of translation, this “approximation of discourse that produces a new discourse” and he opposes the notion of displacement, a phenomenon born of globalization: if people and objects are moved, so it will for language.
03
Crisis

Video — 05.2016

This project is a karaoké-like video for Anohni’s song «Crisis» realized with found footage of wildlife documentaries highlighting the gap between troubles caused by the human race and the Earth that keeps on turning.
02
Access Point

Posters & Book — 12.2015

‘Access Point’ is the result of the reading and interpretation of a building's architectural critique. The archival publication documents all of the visual material generated through the CGI process of creating the posters.
01
It was never real

Exhibition & Book — 10.2015
With Ill-Studio & MAAD

‘It was never real’ highlights the cultural environment and the different types of inspirations that accompanies the creation of an image, a typeface, an object. The collective source cloud initiated a self-reflective dialogue on its own, and combined with the work images it constituted an encyclopedia of influences in which the original works and their references blended together, whether they were classic or contemporary, direct or abstract. As a result, a publication and an exhibition were developed. Entitled "It was never real", the exhibition was conceived as a scenography implementing the visual content into a three-dimensional space.

About

Nicolas Garner is an image-maker and art director based in Paris (FR).
He graduated with a master’s degree in Art Direction at ECAL. His trans-
disciplinary practice is characterized
by a significant interest in the
decompartmentalization of creative mediums and a rigorous approach to
experimentation and research
around aesthetics. He works in the
fields of art, fashion and design
as part of self-initiated projects or collaborations.

Contact

For information, work requests and collaborations, please contact
me at → hello@nicolasgarner.com

Instagram: @nicolasgarner

References

22RUEMULLER: Anthologie
Duperré Masterclass Report
Entkunstung II
It's Nice That: Printed Pages SS18
Pousta
The Future Laboratory
It’s Nice That
Eyes on Talents
Unrated
Augmented Photography (2017)
augmented-photography.ch
Making Sense: 10 Years of Research
in Art and Design at ECAL (2017)
Dazeddigital
Current Obsession
MA-AD
It’s Nice That
ECAL
Fucking Young
WAD Magazine

Credits

News

05.2020
Currently working for BALENCIAGA, Paris (FR)

09.2019
Presentation of DIDU's SS2020 collection at Paris Fashion Week
(with L'Insane): 3 looks designed in collaboration

04.2019
Conference/work presentation at Art school Duperré, Paris (FR)

01.2019
Currently working at creative studio MaisonNue, Paris (FR)

11.2018
Firewall With Me, exhibition curated by Lazer Quest at DOC, Paris (FR)

04.2018
Designer at With Projects, New York (USA)

04.2018
Video projections for Coucou! party, Paris (FR)

10.2017
Group Exhibition curated by It’s Our Playground at espace lausannois d’art contemporain (CH)

06.2017
Graduation with a master’s degree in Art Direction at Ecal/University of Art and Design, Lausanne (CH)

10.2016
Photo publication exhibited + production performance during the European Month of Photography
at Helmut Newton Foundation with Ecal for C/O Berlin (DE)

04.2016
Exhibition, publication (3000 copies) and performance at One Thousand Books experimental art book festival in Copenhagen (DK)

Didu SS2020