Nicolas Garner: Meta-Aesthetics

Nicolas Garner

Visual Art & Image-Making

15
Didu SS2020

Fashion — 09.2019

At the invitation of fashion designer DIDU (Antwerp, BE) a collaboration started in summer 2019 for designing several looks of her SS2020 collection. A process of different steps and techniques allowed the creation of a series of prints as a base material for the dresses' design.
14
Blurred Vision of Nataliya

Digital Painting — 11.2018

«Blurred Vision of Nataliya» 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. It is the result of the hybridization of several digital techniques. 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
13
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 this virtual humanoid. 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 this former numeric body while taking away its (virtual) life. The avatar 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
12
Hydra

3D visual — 09.2018

«Hydra» is a 3D visual commissioned by Jean-Baptiste Levée, from foundry Production Type (Paris, FR) to illustrate 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.
11
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.
10
Genesis 1:27

Installation & Video — 06.2017

In keeping with «Hyperreality», «Genesis 1:27» questions the concept of avatar, alternative version of the self, but this time through the metaphor of birth and by extension, of the Creation. The installation is an immersion to the very core of human existence, within the materiality of the body. It blurs the lines between real and unreal, either visually, technically or spiritually. The confrontation of a commercial aesthetic with appealing light panels to religious references, especially in the projected film, cynically addresses the issue of commoditization of human life in the age of late capitalism. Coming alive thanks to 3D animation and motion capture technologies, the artist was able to embody his own alter ego.
09
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.
08
Dystopia

Visual pieces — 12.2016

«Dystopia» is a triptych of visuals presented on light boxes resulting from the exploration of virtual environments. Indeed, the wander into different video games allowed the capture of images pointing out the seams, the edges of the space or the glitches of this entirely set up world. Distorted shapes, pixelated stretched out surfaces and battered structures highlight the falseness of it. The displayed images also evoke 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 deserted Earth where the time doesn't exist.
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 medias, 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?). The cult of the body, cult of the performance and self-improvement are integral parts of this questioning. Composed of both still and moving images, the piece may confuse the audience by displaying an unreal but photorealistic 3d human subject in supposedly the ultimate of authenticity: "au naturel".
06
Reset

Visual series — 07.2016

«Reset» was inspired by the concept of bug and failure in the virtual world such as video games. Staging unnatural poses, distorsions and collisions between body and space, the series of visuals questions the realness of computer-generated-images and how trustworthy they are in the context of our post-photographic era.
05
Synthetic Skin

Photograph series — 02.2016

«Synthetic Skin» addresses the issue of the representation of human body through the technological tool. It explores what could be called a post-organic body. Photography was used as a basis, then a 3D facial recognition app was exploited and diverted from its usual aim for artificially editing the position, face expression and lighting in the image. This way, the figure was becoming a malleable material. The work also investigates the concept of uncanny valley, playing with the revulsion towards objects or humanoids that look or act almost like a human being. Indeed, one may not 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

«Crisis» is a karaoké-inspired video imagined for Anohni’s song of the same name. It was made with found footage of wildlife documentaries.
02
Access Point

Posters & Book — 12.2015

The sole reading and interpretation of a text describing an architectural piece was the starting place of «Access Point». The project includes 2 CGI posters and a publication archiving all the visual material generated through their creation's process.
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,
artist and independent designer based in Paris (FR). He graduated with
a master’s degree in Art Direction at ECAL. His transdisciplinary practice
is characterized by a significant interest in the decompartmentalization of creative mediums and a rigorous approach to research and experimen-
tation. He works in the fields of art, fashion and design as part of collab-
orations, self-initiated projects or commissions.

Contact

For work-related requests or information, please drop a line at
→ hello@nicolasgarner.com

References

22RUEMULLER: Anthologie
DOC!
Duperré Masterclass Report
Entkunstung II
It's Nice That: Printed Pages SS18
Pousta
The Future Laboratory
It’s Nice That
One Thousand Books Festival
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 as a designer/
colorist 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 and production performance during European Month of Photography at Helmut Newton Foundation with ECAL + 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